Companies using old computers (if it aint broke...)

[Chris Brandsma]

Seriously, I think the first computer is older than I am.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/249951/if_it_aint_broke_dont_fix_it_ancient_computers_in_use_today.html

This actually sparked a debate in me, about when to rewrite software (like, when your hardware is obsolete)

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Christopher Brandsma
http://www.ChrisBrandsma.com
http://www.ElegantCode.com
http://www.BoiseCodeCamp.com

[Jim McKeeth]

Interesting read. I can think of lots of times that a rewrite or upgrade was actually a step backwards. We tend to be obsessed about latest and greatest, but that isn't always the best.

-Jim McKeeth
j...@mckeeth.org
www.Delphi.org - The Podcast at Delphi.org
www.McKeeth.org - Personal home page

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[Tony Rasa]

Very interesting.  One nitpick: the plural of VAX is VAXen, 

[Chris Brandsma]

We had a debate a while ago about the plural of status.  Was it statuses or stati.  Turns out, as the word is greek, stati is correct.

But, in dutch (and probably German, but I don't really know), to plural a word you use 'en.  That is how we get Children.

So, VAXi, VAXes, VAXen?

[Tony Rasa]

There was supposed to be a citation on my email but I fail at copy/paste apparently ;)

http://catb.org/jargon/html/V/VAXen.html

[Gregg Irwin]

Chris,

Last year a neighbor who works at a small local business asked me to
estimate replacing their old system. I went in, and the PC was ~20
years old, running Win95. Very dusty, dot matrix printer to go with
it, the whole nine yards. More data than would fit on a floppy (and no
zip software available). I took in my old PKZip floppies, but the
drive wouldn't read them. It *would* read the driver disk for an old
IOMega zip drive (100MB), which I hooked up to the parallel port (no
USB of course). Data saved. The old system was written in Paradox for
DOS.

I had an old CoCo3 for a long time, until my wife convinced me I would
never use it again. :) The first computer I ever worked on was this:

http://oldcomputers.net/hp85.html

I also did some "programming" on a Tandy T100 to run the laser light
show at the Knott's Berry Farm Good Time Theatre.

To the question it raises, hardware, OS, runtime platform; all these
things can make it hard, or impossible to keep things running, or use
them for reference. In the above Paradox case, I was able to use
DOSBox to run it. Aside from sentiment and nostalgia, businesses need
a reason to change. That reason may be risk (old systems dying),
efficiency, user happiness, competitive advantage, etc. The same
applies to new systems as well as old. How much and how fast should we
change?

I don't like churn, and I've seen so much money and time wasted
building systems that I might be considered a bit of a Luddite myself.
I have an old phone. Not a smart phone, or a fancy phone, or a new
phone. I use it as a phone, not a GPS, not a browser, not an email
client or mobile computer.

Like the people in the story, my technology works for me. You
mentioned that your main client is still heavy into IE7. We lament
this, but how much change is good, and how much is just change? In the
new era of apps and the cloud, we're coming full circle (sort of :).

Is there a sweet spot? I wish I knew.

-- Gregg

[Chris Brandsma]

I see IE7 as a separate issue.  If you are developing for an old box, you are just writing code for that old box -- not that old box and every newer version of that box that might exist in someones basement somewhere.

But that is what I have to do on the web.  Now my code has manager and client components.  On the manager the oldest browser I support is IE7.  On the client I might have to go older.  There are different apis, different capabilities.  Plus, everyone wants things to look up to date with cutting edge features.  That gets hard to manage at times.  Not to mention the testing time.  Loading up multiple virtual machines to test a single feature.  The cost of this get high in a hurry.

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[Gregg Irwin]

Hi Chris,

CB> I see IE7 as a separate issue. If you are developing for an old box, you
CB> are just writing code for that old box -- not that old box and every newer
CB> version of that box that might exist in someones basement somewhere.

That's what I meant by hardware, OS, and platform. When do you
rewrite? And dependencies matter. How much control you have, target
audience, etc.

"If it ain't broke" is based on there being no underlying changes. If
we have to care about what is in people's basements (and I work out of
mine :), things are constantly breaking.

-- Gregg