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Presumably for something as expensive as the US nuclear weapons program, they could afford to hire and fully train 10x as many people as they need to be experts
by swores 3y ago
Presumably for something as expensive as the US nuclear weapons program, they could afford to hire and fully train 10x as many people as they need to be experts in externally-obsolete software/hardware and it just have the effect of a rounding error in their overall budget?
If that were cheaper, or considered more reliable or less hackable, than upgrading the systems to run on more modern technology then why not, as long as they look ahead far enough to make sure they fund the required tutoring to get the knowledge being passed down a generation or two, and do it before getting to the point where not having enough young experts actually has become a problem.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- chupy 3y agoCan you give an example of modern technology that you believe would be supported or maintained in 50 years?
- _ugfj 3y agoThe PDP-11 was unusually well suited for that. They designed it so you needed less skilled workers to assemble it which meant a lot of tolerance in components which leads to much easier maintenance. For example, the backplane is wire wrapped so there's no soldiering there which can eventually tire out. If things move around, oh well. Also the PDP-11 was designed at the time boundary of core vs semiconductor memory with the clear intent to be able switch to semiconductor which led to an unusually flexible design around memory (and also affected I/O design). Check this 1975 paper https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/800110.803541 https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/800110.803541