Re: What should I say to a *nix community?

Quoting James Lampert <jamesl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

Lukas Beeler wrote:

My point is that being able to run old stuff unmodified can be very
bad for progress.

In the 1950s and 1960s, we thought freeways, conversion of urban transit
systems from streetcars to buses, and near-universal automobile
ownership were "progress," and passenger trains -- from the streetcar to
the Sunset Limited -- were "old stuff."

*cough cough*

Running "old stuff unmodified" is a perfect expression of the old
engineer's maxim, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."

--
James H. H. Lampert
Touchtone Corporation

I heard this horror story that contradicts the engineer's maxim:

There was this company that had a rather involved (for the day) accounting
system that ran on the IBM 1401 (system came out in 1959, had a maximum of
16K). Ibm notified the company that hardware support would end. Compnay was
unwilling to invest anything into updating the accounting system, as it worked
"just fine". IBM had a solution, the System 360 including hardware emulation
of the IBM 1401. This worked well for the company, until IBM phased out the
S/360 and introduced S/370 - a system that had NO provision for hardware
emulation of IBM 1401 code.

By this time, the person who wrote the original code, in Autocoder (assembler on
IBM 1401) had long retired. Nobody else understood the code. He was brought
out of retirement at a substantial fee, to assist in developing the new
accounting system. Company "saved" money all those years by putting off any
conversion. Paid dearly when they had no choice. Now, I suppose, they would
just bring in some vendor and be done with it.

John McKee