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Prowling The Ruins Of Ancient Software

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the from-an-archaeological-perspective dept

Wed, Jul 30th 2003 12:18am — Mike Masnick
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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  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 30 Jul 2003 @ 12:35am

    Mmmm 1980s code

    The kind that valued execution speed at all costs, at the cost of readability or maintainability? Depending on the programmer you asked, a "good" programmer never inserts comments in his code, because it might sacrifice the speed, or that those who cannot figure out comment-less code do not deserve to program.

    How about them 999 return codes?

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      thecaptain, 30 Jul 2003 @ 10:34am

      Re: Mmmm 1980s code

      How the h*ll would comments in the code sacrifice speed?

      Mind you I didn't use compilers in the 80s but didn't they then as now simply ignore code comments when compiling?

      [ link to this | view in chronology ]

      • identicon
        Anonymous Coward, 30 Jul 2003 @ 12:32pm

        Re: Mmmm 1980s code

        Interpretive languages were common back then, when C was still a new language. Also, when programmer did not have access to the internet back then, there were urban legends that comments do slow down compilers.

        [ link to this | view in chronology ]


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