Maintaining old projects...
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Chris Losinger wrote:
before we learned the process was patented
:omg: How can you patent a process?
Hope is the negation of reality - Raistlin Majere
like this: USP 6,137,498:
What is claimed is: 1. A method for generating a mosaic image with an appearance that approximates a target image by utilizing a plurality of source images and a computer, comprising the steps of: loading the target image into the computer; dividing the target image into a plurality of tile regions, each tile region representing a distinct locus of the target image, and for each tile region: etc..
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Chris Losinger wrote:
before we learned the process was patented
:omg: How can you patent a process?
Hope is the negation of reality - Raistlin Majere
By lying to the patent office and convincing them you've "invented" something. The patent process was originally envisioned as a far more limited scope endeavor than the way it is currently abused.
The early bird who catches the worm works for someone who comes in late and owns the worm farm. -- Travis McGee
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What's the oldest project of your own that you still maintain yourself? I'm not talking about someone else's old code, or code you've rewritten completely, but stuff that is largely unchanged that you still work on. I still do work (sometimes major work) on the first project I did when I started at my current job 10 years ago. It was my first MFC program, and it shows. Some of the internals have been heavily rewritten, but most of the UI stuff is the same. I itch to do a rewrite with a completely overhauled UI, but it's never a priority for management. It looked so modern at the time but is now horribly dated. I also occasionally work on another project that is about 8 years old, but thankfully I'm not the main programmer on that one anymore. This one is also MFC and uses MDI which I now hate. It's a popular program, but it could be so much better (alas for more time). Any relics that you guys still have to poke at?
Faith is a fine invention For gentlemen who see; But microscopes are prudent In an emergency! -Emily Dickinson
I still link to a library that I started in the early 90s (the oldest copyright year I can find is 1994). Its current form is an MFC extension DLL. Mostly imaging-related, with a few utility classes thrown in. Every 6 months or so I find some little thing to tweak in there. Mark
Mark Salsbery Microsoft MVP - Visual C++ :java:
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What's the oldest project of your own that you still maintain yourself? I'm not talking about someone else's old code, or code you've rewritten completely, but stuff that is largely unchanged that you still work on. I still do work (sometimes major work) on the first project I did when I started at my current job 10 years ago. It was my first MFC program, and it shows. Some of the internals have been heavily rewritten, but most of the UI stuff is the same. I itch to do a rewrite with a completely overhauled UI, but it's never a priority for management. It looked so modern at the time but is now horribly dated. I also occasionally work on another project that is about 8 years old, but thankfully I'm not the main programmer on that one anymore. This one is also MFC and uses MDI which I now hate. It's a popular program, but it could be so much better (alas for more time). Any relics that you guys still have to poke at?
Faith is a fine invention For gentlemen who see; But microscopes are prudent In an emergency! -Emily Dickinson
I am responsible for a number of old projects. * A Windows version of a terminal emulator (which emulates a Wang 2236DW, which must win some points for obscurity), which was started when Windows 3.0 came out, around 1990. There are still 16 bit versions knocking around (shudder), but thankfully what *very* little maintenance is left is for the 32 bit version. The code is all 'C', built using Borland tools (I have Borland C++ 5.0 installed on my PC *just in case*). Old versions use a horrid hardware dongle protection scheme (fitted to a parallel port). Some of code was ripped out of a DOS version of the emulator that heralds from the late 80s. * A Windows mail package that we have used in-house since 1992 (now in it's 4th incarnation). The current version is written in MFC, but we are moving to ADEX/Outlook now, so this project is running down. * A form printing/email/fax engine which is a major product for my company and has taken up most of my time since I started it back in 1997. MFC again, although I have switched to ATL/WTL for some components in later versions. I will be porting this app to Linux in the next few years, which I am very excited about (no, really!). I also have lots of other small projects which require the occasional tweak or fix. One is an image scanner/viewer app, v1.0 of which started shipping in 1991 or so.
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What's the oldest project of your own that you still maintain yourself? I'm not talking about someone else's old code, or code you've rewritten completely, but stuff that is largely unchanged that you still work on. I still do work (sometimes major work) on the first project I did when I started at my current job 10 years ago. It was my first MFC program, and it shows. Some of the internals have been heavily rewritten, but most of the UI stuff is the same. I itch to do a rewrite with a completely overhauled UI, but it's never a priority for management. It looked so modern at the time but is now horribly dated. I also occasionally work on another project that is about 8 years old, but thankfully I'm not the main programmer on that one anymore. This one is also MFC and uses MDI which I now hate. It's a popular program, but it could be so much better (alas for more time). Any relics that you guys still have to poke at?
Faith is a fine invention For gentlemen who see; But microscopes are prudent In an emergency! -Emily Dickinson
The system I work on goes back over 20 years with a major rewrite around '95 when we bumped the OS version from 2 to 4 (QNX). At that point I got to move from a K&R C compiler (No prototypes. memcpy missing the length parameter? no problem, just use what's on the stack) to the ultra modern Watcom C compiler which I'm still using today -- V10.6 built in 1997.
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like this: USP 6,137,498:
What is claimed is: 1. A method for generating a mosaic image with an appearance that approximates a target image by utilizing a plurality of source images and a computer, comprising the steps of: loading the target image into the computer; dividing the target image into a plurality of tile regions, each tile region representing a distinct locus of the target image, and for each tile region: etc..
I was just messing about with a freebie mosaic program last night -- AndreaMosaic[^]. It was mentioned on a DL.TV podcast my TiVo picked up. Tons of fun.
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What's the oldest project of your own that you still maintain yourself? I'm not talking about someone else's old code, or code you've rewritten completely, but stuff that is largely unchanged that you still work on. I still do work (sometimes major work) on the first project I did when I started at my current job 10 years ago. It was my first MFC program, and it shows. Some of the internals have been heavily rewritten, but most of the UI stuff is the same. I itch to do a rewrite with a completely overhauled UI, but it's never a priority for management. It looked so modern at the time but is now horribly dated. I also occasionally work on another project that is about 8 years old, but thankfully I'm not the main programmer on that one anymore. This one is also MFC and uses MDI which I now hate. It's a popular program, but it could be so much better (alas for more time). Any relics that you guys still have to poke at?
Faith is a fine invention For gentlemen who see; But microscopes are prudent In an emergency! -Emily Dickinson
I have a project in Delphi 3, still modified from time to time. It consits of many programs that we launch as extensions (EXE and DLL) during InstallShield setups of products developped in Delphi 3 too. This project started in october 1997 and I'm the only developper on it since the end of 1998. It concerned up 12 products and 19 options (what we call "option" : product that need the presence of an other product to setup and run). Now only 3 products and one option are regularly updated once or twice a year. CHABAT Florent FRANCE
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What's the oldest project of your own that you still maintain yourself? I'm not talking about someone else's old code, or code you've rewritten completely, but stuff that is largely unchanged that you still work on. I still do work (sometimes major work) on the first project I did when I started at my current job 10 years ago. It was my first MFC program, and it shows. Some of the internals have been heavily rewritten, but most of the UI stuff is the same. I itch to do a rewrite with a completely overhauled UI, but it's never a priority for management. It looked so modern at the time but is now horribly dated. I also occasionally work on another project that is about 8 years old, but thankfully I'm not the main programmer on that one anymore. This one is also MFC and uses MDI which I now hate. It's a popular program, but it could be so much better (alas for more time). Any relics that you guys still have to poke at?
Faith is a fine invention For gentlemen who see; But microscopes are prudent In an emergency! -Emily Dickinson
David Kentley wrote:
I still do work (sometimes major work) on the first project I did when I started at my current job 10 years ago. It was my first MFC program, and it shows. Some of the internals have been heavily rewritten, but most of the UI stuff is the same. I itch to do a rewrite with a completely overhauled UI, but it's never a priority for management. It looked so modern at the time but is now horribly dated.
I could have written that myself. The problem is that being a team of one means that there just isn't time to do a major rewrite, and although I've tried to keep new projects in C# there is too much legacy code to abandon MFC.
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What's the oldest project of your own that you still maintain yourself? I'm not talking about someone else's old code, or code you've rewritten completely, but stuff that is largely unchanged that you still work on. I still do work (sometimes major work) on the first project I did when I started at my current job 10 years ago. It was my first MFC program, and it shows. Some of the internals have been heavily rewritten, but most of the UI stuff is the same. I itch to do a rewrite with a completely overhauled UI, but it's never a priority for management. It looked so modern at the time but is now horribly dated. I also occasionally work on another project that is about 8 years old, but thankfully I'm not the main programmer on that one anymore. This one is also MFC and uses MDI which I now hate. It's a popular program, but it could be so much better (alas for more time). Any relics that you guys still have to poke at?
Faith is a fine invention For gentlemen who see; But microscopes are prudent In an emergency! -Emily Dickinson
Errr think the answer here has to be Windows - Heard a rumour that Microsoft hopes to get it to work soon. But wouldn’t hold my breath..... For own work it dates back to 1988 code - mainly mathematical stuff that has moved from c to c++. Some of this code was based on Fortran code going back to the dawn of time or at least of computing! Sort of write once - use forever!
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The system I work on goes back over 20 years with a major rewrite around '95 when we bumped the OS version from 2 to 4 (QNX). At that point I got to move from a K&R C compiler (No prototypes. memcpy missing the length parameter? no problem, just use what's on the stack) to the ultra modern Watcom C compiler which I'm still using today -- V10.6 built in 1997.
Robert Surtees wrote:
Watcom C compiler which I'm still using today -- V10.6 built in 1997
I used the WATCOM C 9.0 compiler back in the early to mid 90's. The compiler was OK, but the debugger was completely unusable. They supplied a real mode debugger for debugging protected mode MS-DOS applications :rolleyes:.
Software Zen:
delete this; -
Errr think the answer here has to be Windows - Heard a rumour that Microsoft hopes to get it to work soon. But wouldn’t hold my breath..... For own work it dates back to 1988 code - mainly mathematical stuff that has moved from c to c++. Some of this code was based on Fortran code going back to the dawn of time or at least of computing! Sort of write once - use forever!
Bob1000 wrote:
based on Fortran code going back to the dawn of time
There are simulation programs that are actively maintained by the DoD that are 40 years old. Some of them have been passed between a dozen companies or more for their maintenance.
Software Zen:
delete this; -
The system I work on goes back over 20 years with a major rewrite around '95 when we bumped the OS version from 2 to 4 (QNX). At that point I got to move from a K&R C compiler (No prototypes. memcpy missing the length parameter? no problem, just use what's on the stack) to the ultra modern Watcom C compiler which I'm still using today -- V10.6 built in 1997.
Untill I decided to go back to school 2 years ago I was supporting BBX Basic code written in the 70's. And I wrote some of that legacy code that is still around and being supported by some poor techie. I was contacted by a headhunter a few weeks ago about some garment industry software I had a hand in back in the 70's. It is still running and they hope to replace it in the next 2 years - Was I interested? uuummmm 2 years of supporting it ? Let me think about - don't call me I'll call you.:rolleyes: