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

Charles Wilt wrote:

I'd agree that the ROI of re-writing software that never needs to be
modified is non-existant.

But most software is continually modified, thus there is indeed an ROI
for rewriting to make use of more modern and easier to maintain
techniques.

Just out of curiosity, what percentage of programs need (a) to be continually modified while (b) never being recompiled for years?

I thought that the whole point of the discussion was that software that didn't need to be changed could still load and run successfully.

And if it's ugly to change today, wasn't it ugly ten years ago? Is there that much effort saved by modernizing _that_ program ten years earlier even though it needed no changes?

The ability to load programs written for the S/38 seems somewhat unrelated to ugly code that has been modified/patched/"enhanced with many new functions over many years without being rewritten", isn't it?

None of which should be taken to mean that I won't rewrite a program when I see it needs it...

Tom Liotta