Still running after all these years?
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Nagy posted a thread about software he wrote from twenty years ago that still ran years later and it got me thinking. I wrote some code for a British Aircraft Company (that shall remain nameless) in 1982, supported and enhanced it until 1984 and then stupidly got a job at a (mind-numbing) insurance company just because they paid 50% more than I was on at the most exciting job I ever had. It was an expert system for automatic test-flight (jet fighters whizzing past outside my office all the time) analysis that they estimated saved them over £10,000,000 per year and converted six weeks of analysis into a 4-hour computer job allowing eventually more than one test flight per day. I had created it from my own ideas, staying late on my own time to initially develop the prototype and proof of concept. When I resigned to take the much higher paid job they offered me a double promotion (meaningless because union rules had created about 27 layers - even though I wasn't in the union I was still stuck with their stupid rules) and £250 per annum pay raise to stay on! I didn't. ...but I digressed into bitterness and regret. The real point is that they still used that software, unchanged, for nearly 11 years after I left the company. Another company I worked for is still selling some automation software I developed almost single-handedly, practically unchanged. I left that company in early 2003 so it is another 11 year run - and still running! How many times, and for how long has software you have written continued to run after you personally stopped supporting it and/or left the company that you developed it at. I am not looking for company software you worked on in a team, but software that you designed and wrote the vast majority of that was commercially used by your company or sold?
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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Nagy posted a thread about software he wrote from twenty years ago that still ran years later and it got me thinking. I wrote some code for a British Aircraft Company (that shall remain nameless) in 1982, supported and enhanced it until 1984 and then stupidly got a job at a (mind-numbing) insurance company just because they paid 50% more than I was on at the most exciting job I ever had. It was an expert system for automatic test-flight (jet fighters whizzing past outside my office all the time) analysis that they estimated saved them over £10,000,000 per year and converted six weeks of analysis into a 4-hour computer job allowing eventually more than one test flight per day. I had created it from my own ideas, staying late on my own time to initially develop the prototype and proof of concept. When I resigned to take the much higher paid job they offered me a double promotion (meaningless because union rules had created about 27 layers - even though I wasn't in the union I was still stuck with their stupid rules) and £250 per annum pay raise to stay on! I didn't. ...but I digressed into bitterness and regret. The real point is that they still used that software, unchanged, for nearly 11 years after I left the company. Another company I worked for is still selling some automation software I developed almost single-handedly, practically unchanged. I left that company in early 2003 so it is another 11 year run - and still running! How many times, and for how long has software you have written continued to run after you personally stopped supporting it and/or left the company that you developed it at. I am not looking for company software you worked on in a team, but software that you designed and wrote the vast majority of that was commercially used by your company or sold?
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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Nagy posted a thread about software he wrote from twenty years ago that still ran years later and it got me thinking. I wrote some code for a British Aircraft Company (that shall remain nameless) in 1982, supported and enhanced it until 1984 and then stupidly got a job at a (mind-numbing) insurance company just because they paid 50% more than I was on at the most exciting job I ever had. It was an expert system for automatic test-flight (jet fighters whizzing past outside my office all the time) analysis that they estimated saved them over £10,000,000 per year and converted six weeks of analysis into a 4-hour computer job allowing eventually more than one test flight per day. I had created it from my own ideas, staying late on my own time to initially develop the prototype and proof of concept. When I resigned to take the much higher paid job they offered me a double promotion (meaningless because union rules had created about 27 layers - even though I wasn't in the union I was still stuck with their stupid rules) and £250 per annum pay raise to stay on! I didn't. ...but I digressed into bitterness and regret. The real point is that they still used that software, unchanged, for nearly 11 years after I left the company. Another company I worked for is still selling some automation software I developed almost single-handedly, practically unchanged. I left that company in early 2003 so it is another 11 year run - and still running! How many times, and for how long has software you have written continued to run after you personally stopped supporting it and/or left the company that you developed it at. I am not looking for company software you worked on in a team, but software that you designed and wrote the vast majority of that was commercially used by your company or sold?
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
While I don't know how long it was ultimately in use, I ran into a former boss about 4 years after leaving a job where I had single-handedly written the system that allowed them to move their software product to a (totally different) stable hardware platform without giving up the original development environment. This involved writing a terminal emulator that allowed decompilations to be saved, a cross-decompiler for the virtual machine object files, and a new runtime on the other hardware platform - plus optimization during the cross-decompilation. He mentioned that there was only 1 known bug which had an easy workaround and that they still depended on it for their main product.
According to my calculations, I should be able to retire about 5 years after I die.
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That's fine. What I wanted to exclude is code people just wrote for their own use.
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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Nagy posted a thread about software he wrote from twenty years ago that still ran years later and it got me thinking. I wrote some code for a British Aircraft Company (that shall remain nameless) in 1982, supported and enhanced it until 1984 and then stupidly got a job at a (mind-numbing) insurance company just because they paid 50% more than I was on at the most exciting job I ever had. It was an expert system for automatic test-flight (jet fighters whizzing past outside my office all the time) analysis that they estimated saved them over £10,000,000 per year and converted six weeks of analysis into a 4-hour computer job allowing eventually more than one test flight per day. I had created it from my own ideas, staying late on my own time to initially develop the prototype and proof of concept. When I resigned to take the much higher paid job they offered me a double promotion (meaningless because union rules had created about 27 layers - even though I wasn't in the union I was still stuck with their stupid rules) and £250 per annum pay raise to stay on! I didn't. ...but I digressed into bitterness and regret. The real point is that they still used that software, unchanged, for nearly 11 years after I left the company. Another company I worked for is still selling some automation software I developed almost single-handedly, practically unchanged. I left that company in early 2003 so it is another 11 year run - and still running! How many times, and for how long has software you have written continued to run after you personally stopped supporting it and/or left the company that you developed it at. I am not looking for company software you worked on in a team, but software that you designed and wrote the vast majority of that was commercially used by your company or sold?
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
I wrote a sales lead tracking (early CRM) system for internal use back in the mid-80's. FoxPro for DOS based, multi-user, standard reports as well as user created custom reports. Stopped maintaining it approximately 1987-88. They ran it until 2003 - despite the Y2K issues. :omg: I wrote a machine control application (HMI / machine logic / geometry input / axis motion & interpolation) for a multi-spindle drilling machine. Last updated in 2004. Over 150 of these machines currently running in the field. Only problem is that it is Windows XP only! Cannot easily be ported to Windows 7 or higher. :doh:
Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. ~ George Washington
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Nagy posted a thread about software he wrote from twenty years ago that still ran years later and it got me thinking. I wrote some code for a British Aircraft Company (that shall remain nameless) in 1982, supported and enhanced it until 1984 and then stupidly got a job at a (mind-numbing) insurance company just because they paid 50% more than I was on at the most exciting job I ever had. It was an expert system for automatic test-flight (jet fighters whizzing past outside my office all the time) analysis that they estimated saved them over £10,000,000 per year and converted six weeks of analysis into a 4-hour computer job allowing eventually more than one test flight per day. I had created it from my own ideas, staying late on my own time to initially develop the prototype and proof of concept. When I resigned to take the much higher paid job they offered me a double promotion (meaningless because union rules had created about 27 layers - even though I wasn't in the union I was still stuck with their stupid rules) and £250 per annum pay raise to stay on! I didn't. ...but I digressed into bitterness and regret. The real point is that they still used that software, unchanged, for nearly 11 years after I left the company. Another company I worked for is still selling some automation software I developed almost single-handedly, practically unchanged. I left that company in early 2003 so it is another 11 year run - and still running! How many times, and for how long has software you have written continued to run after you personally stopped supporting it and/or left the company that you developed it at. I am not looking for company software you worked on in a team, but software that you designed and wrote the vast majority of that was commercially used by your company or sold?
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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Nagy posted a thread about software he wrote from twenty years ago that still ran years later and it got me thinking. I wrote some code for a British Aircraft Company (that shall remain nameless) in 1982, supported and enhanced it until 1984 and then stupidly got a job at a (mind-numbing) insurance company just because they paid 50% more than I was on at the most exciting job I ever had. It was an expert system for automatic test-flight (jet fighters whizzing past outside my office all the time) analysis that they estimated saved them over £10,000,000 per year and converted six weeks of analysis into a 4-hour computer job allowing eventually more than one test flight per day. I had created it from my own ideas, staying late on my own time to initially develop the prototype and proof of concept. When I resigned to take the much higher paid job they offered me a double promotion (meaningless because union rules had created about 27 layers - even though I wasn't in the union I was still stuck with their stupid rules) and £250 per annum pay raise to stay on! I didn't. ...but I digressed into bitterness and regret. The real point is that they still used that software, unchanged, for nearly 11 years after I left the company. Another company I worked for is still selling some automation software I developed almost single-handedly, practically unchanged. I left that company in early 2003 so it is another 11 year run - and still running! How many times, and for how long has software you have written continued to run after you personally stopped supporting it and/or left the company that you developed it at. I am not looking for company software you worked on in a team, but software that you designed and wrote the vast majority of that was commercially used by your company or sold?
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
When I started to work with at my current company (in 1997) my first job was to develop a state-of-the art (then at least) report creator, that enables to every user to dynamically create reports on the fly...I used C++, Pervasive SQL (over BTRIEVE) and a lot of DOS...It's still in use with a few of our customers, that decided not to upgrade to the Windows based version (it's cost money). It makes it 17 years...
I'm not questioning your powers of observation; I'm merely remarking upon the paradox of asking a masked man who he is. (V)
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Nagy posted a thread about software he wrote from twenty years ago that still ran years later and it got me thinking. I wrote some code for a British Aircraft Company (that shall remain nameless) in 1982, supported and enhanced it until 1984 and then stupidly got a job at a (mind-numbing) insurance company just because they paid 50% more than I was on at the most exciting job I ever had. It was an expert system for automatic test-flight (jet fighters whizzing past outside my office all the time) analysis that they estimated saved them over £10,000,000 per year and converted six weeks of analysis into a 4-hour computer job allowing eventually more than one test flight per day. I had created it from my own ideas, staying late on my own time to initially develop the prototype and proof of concept. When I resigned to take the much higher paid job they offered me a double promotion (meaningless because union rules had created about 27 layers - even though I wasn't in the union I was still stuck with their stupid rules) and £250 per annum pay raise to stay on! I didn't. ...but I digressed into bitterness and regret. The real point is that they still used that software, unchanged, for nearly 11 years after I left the company. Another company I worked for is still selling some automation software I developed almost single-handedly, practically unchanged. I left that company in early 2003 so it is another 11 year run - and still running! How many times, and for how long has software you have written continued to run after you personally stopped supporting it and/or left the company that you developed it at. I am not looking for company software you worked on in a team, but software that you designed and wrote the vast majority of that was commercially used by your company or sold?
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
Back in 1989 I wrote some stuff in 'C' that was supposed to be used across the patch - utility functions, modules etc... "common code" as it used to be known. (Finally) Left that company in 2000 ... mate still works there emailed me last month to say it was still there, still working, untouched. Scary!
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Nagy posted a thread about software he wrote from twenty years ago that still ran years later and it got me thinking. I wrote some code for a British Aircraft Company (that shall remain nameless) in 1982, supported and enhanced it until 1984 and then stupidly got a job at a (mind-numbing) insurance company just because they paid 50% more than I was on at the most exciting job I ever had. It was an expert system for automatic test-flight (jet fighters whizzing past outside my office all the time) analysis that they estimated saved them over £10,000,000 per year and converted six weeks of analysis into a 4-hour computer job allowing eventually more than one test flight per day. I had created it from my own ideas, staying late on my own time to initially develop the prototype and proof of concept. When I resigned to take the much higher paid job they offered me a double promotion (meaningless because union rules had created about 27 layers - even though I wasn't in the union I was still stuck with their stupid rules) and £250 per annum pay raise to stay on! I didn't. ...but I digressed into bitterness and regret. The real point is that they still used that software, unchanged, for nearly 11 years after I left the company. Another company I worked for is still selling some automation software I developed almost single-handedly, practically unchanged. I left that company in early 2003 so it is another 11 year run - and still running! How many times, and for how long has software you have written continued to run after you personally stopped supporting it and/or left the company that you developed it at. I am not looking for company software you worked on in a team, but software that you designed and wrote the vast majority of that was commercially used by your company or sold?
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
I worked for a company in the '80s that made the Sharp PC3000 handheld computer. After resisting for a while (because the company thought it would be too expensive) they gave (lent) the dev team a PC3000 each. I thought it ran far too slowly, so I rewrote the ROM interface one evening in my own time. This made all the apps run a lot faster. The marketing department estimated that this had made the company £100k in direct sales, and £100k in indirect sales. I got a "programmer of the year" award but no hard cash. I don't mind though, I am sure that most of us didn't become software engineers to become rich! Later on I joined an insurance company (yes, yawn) that were going to rewrite the cobbled-together COM/VB/ASP/etc. website. I managed to keep it going and refactor it (by myself for a while); all the permanent members of staff left after one of the offices was closed. The team that took it over also wanted to rewrite it, but they never got round to it. I think most of them have now left. The cobbled-together classic ASP website is still in use (I reckon it is over 15 years old now). I would imagine it still makes them £millions/week. Even I think it should be rewritten now though!
Jon CodeWrite
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Nagy posted a thread about software he wrote from twenty years ago that still ran years later and it got me thinking. I wrote some code for a British Aircraft Company (that shall remain nameless) in 1982, supported and enhanced it until 1984 and then stupidly got a job at a (mind-numbing) insurance company just because they paid 50% more than I was on at the most exciting job I ever had. It was an expert system for automatic test-flight (jet fighters whizzing past outside my office all the time) analysis that they estimated saved them over £10,000,000 per year and converted six weeks of analysis into a 4-hour computer job allowing eventually more than one test flight per day. I had created it from my own ideas, staying late on my own time to initially develop the prototype and proof of concept. When I resigned to take the much higher paid job they offered me a double promotion (meaningless because union rules had created about 27 layers - even though I wasn't in the union I was still stuck with their stupid rules) and £250 per annum pay raise to stay on! I didn't. ...but I digressed into bitterness and regret. The real point is that they still used that software, unchanged, for nearly 11 years after I left the company. Another company I worked for is still selling some automation software I developed almost single-handedly, practically unchanged. I left that company in early 2003 so it is another 11 year run - and still running! How many times, and for how long has software you have written continued to run after you personally stopped supporting it and/or left the company that you developed it at. I am not looking for company software you worked on in a team, but software that you designed and wrote the vast majority of that was commercially used by your company or sold?
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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Nagy posted a thread about software he wrote from twenty years ago that still ran years later and it got me thinking. I wrote some code for a British Aircraft Company (that shall remain nameless) in 1982, supported and enhanced it until 1984 and then stupidly got a job at a (mind-numbing) insurance company just because they paid 50% more than I was on at the most exciting job I ever had. It was an expert system for automatic test-flight (jet fighters whizzing past outside my office all the time) analysis that they estimated saved them over £10,000,000 per year and converted six weeks of analysis into a 4-hour computer job allowing eventually more than one test flight per day. I had created it from my own ideas, staying late on my own time to initially develop the prototype and proof of concept. When I resigned to take the much higher paid job they offered me a double promotion (meaningless because union rules had created about 27 layers - even though I wasn't in the union I was still stuck with their stupid rules) and £250 per annum pay raise to stay on! I didn't. ...but I digressed into bitterness and regret. The real point is that they still used that software, unchanged, for nearly 11 years after I left the company. Another company I worked for is still selling some automation software I developed almost single-handedly, practically unchanged. I left that company in early 2003 so it is another 11 year run - and still running! How many times, and for how long has software you have written continued to run after you personally stopped supporting it and/or left the company that you developed it at. I am not looking for company software you worked on in a team, but software that you designed and wrote the vast majority of that was commercially used by your company or sold?
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
Does it count if I'd be the person grabbed to support it if it ever needs updated again? If so, software I wrote to interface with an embedded PC in 06 is still in use at my current employer. There've been 0 change requests against it since it was deployed 8 years ago. :cool: When the (air gapped) computer it's running on is finally upgraded from XP to Win7 later this year I might have to rebuild it to target a newer version of .net than 1.1 if they don't want to install an 11 year old legacy version on the new controller box.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason? Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful? --Zachris Topelius Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies. -- Sarah Hoyt
