Prowling The Ruins Of Ancient Software
from the from-an-archaeological-perspective dept
The issue of preserving obsolete software seems to come up around here every six months or so. However, this latest article, from Salon, looks at it from a slightly different perspective. Most articles talk mainly about the need to set up systems that will easily let people access old data. This piece, though, looks at it more from an archaeological perspective, talking about the importance of preserving the code itself - rather than preserving the code for the sake of being able to access data. Lots of people seem to have an interest in saving the code, but the biggest hurdle is the ever-friendly DMCA that prevents people from saving most proprietary code.
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Mmmm 1980s code
How about them 999 return codes?
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Re: Mmmm 1980s code
Mind you I didn't use compilers in the 80s but didn't they then as now simply ignore code comments when compiling?
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Re: Mmmm 1980s code
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