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.
Comments on “Prowling The Ruins Of Ancient Software”
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?
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?
Re: 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.