3 ms·
> Can you think of any modern platform that would have the longevity, stability and lack of maintenance burden of that Sharp computer over another 40 years? I
by jrockway 3y ago
> Can you think of any modern platform that would have the longevity, stability and lack of maintenance burden of that Sharp computer over another 40 years?
I mean, probably any UNIX program written in C? Bill Joy vi can run on modern computers. What makes this software substantially different than a text editor?
- hulitu 3y agoJust try to compile a vi from 20 years ago on a modern computer.
- jrockway 3y agoAccording to Wikipedia that was a problem ... 20 years ago. That version compiles today. It's called "Traditional vi" and the Sourceforge site where it's hosted doesn't have a valid certificate so I didn't visit it.
- zokier 3y ago20 years ago was 2003, four years after C99. First x86-64 CPUs were released 20 years ago. Compiling 20 year old C codebase should not be an issue at all if it was half-decent to begin with. Compiling pre-ANSI-C and pre-POSIX codebases might have challenges, but standardization has really gotten us lot of stability here. I'd expect conservatively written C99/POSIX code to be usable certainly for another 20 years, there is just so much inertia there https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect