Raspberry Pi Forums

One for us oldies...

So just how old is the oldest code that you have written that STILL does the job it was intended to do - and still does it on a daily basis?

I wrote large chunks of VAX C code back in the 1992-1993 period which I KNOW are running in anger today in a support system at a certain power station in Suffolk.

Touch screen MMI software for various towed array sonar systems in late '70's. I think some are still being used.

Back in circa 1980, I wrote some code in Fortran (don't remember the version) to calculate what are called "modal corrections" for tide forecasting. They allow for the fact that you have not used 18.6 years (a tidal epoch) of data to identify the tidal constituents. The code is dozens of lines of complicated trigonometric formulae that I understood back then, but don't anymore. Since getting it working, I have not touched it (too scared to!!), but present routines still use that subroutine, including this one on the RPI:
http://www.tideman.kiwi.nz/TiForeHiLo/Chathams/

I wrote some assembler in about 93/94 to run the post office high speed industrial ink jet printers (Domino Amjet devices) that put on the BPO4 barcodes in fluorescent ink. I think that might still be in use (or at least bits of it), unless they were all replaced with something else (most likely!)

I wrote a whole application with its own database in 99 for auditing licensed premises, one customer still uses as the main piece of software for his business every day, and refuses to pay for a rewrite.

Wants things added like sending reports by email which is only possible with a ground up rewite.

I know of at least three programs (one is actually several programs) that I wrote in 84/85 that are still in use. I wrote an accounts suite originally in interpreted BASIC on CP/M on a Sanyo MBC3000 that I ported to compiled BASIC on Olivetti's version of PC-DOS and finally in COBOL on a Tandy Model4 & then PC clone. I get a message every few years or so asking for help in changing the tax parts & a few other bits and pieces when the owner of the business can't work it out for himself.

I also wrote a "knocking up" database for the Young Liberals (and LPYS, I was a flighty thing) in my electoral ward originally on a Sinclair Spectrum with thermal printer but rewritten in Sensible Solution then finally Dataease on a PC clone. I thought it'd had been retired years ago but a couple of years ago I heard that someone had dug it out and was abusing it for purposes it was never intended.

My sister is still using a database I wrote for my mother for her Cat Protection League duties in 84, I've upgraded and improved it over the years but the basic stuff is still using my original tables, reports etc.

I think there might still be the odd snippet of code from a few other things lying around from the 80s as I wrote some of the first virus/trojan detection software in the UK (it sucked, was very very slow and used signatures) & helped write some of the first computer forensics software

I saw this in WH Smiths the other day:
still running after 30 years

bet its stuck on the 'continue?' prompt