Emulation or the real thing?

From: Allison J Parent <allisonp_at_world.std.com>
Date: Wed Oct 21 17:58:51 1998

< I'm still skeptical. I'd love to hear more first-hand reports of
< the oldest code still running as-is. Come on, code from the 50s
< that's never been replaced? Running on what? Under an emulator?

Ok, howabout a Brigeport milling machine with the PDP-8E it was purchased
with in 1975, still running the same code.

code from the 50s would likely be fortran or Cobol and yes it would be
portable enough to go from one machine to the next with only a compile
(no edits). Code from the late 60s era machine could still be running
oth either native hardware or later machines that had to support old
code.

What is missed is code is expensive and hard to maintain so if you have
something good and known you run it for a long time. I'm still running
8080/z80 code from the late 70s early 80s! If it aint broke don't fix
it and the system that it was genned on is also 20 years old last March.
So it's very easy for old code to linger.

Allison
Received on Wed Oct 21 1998 - 17:58:51 BST