Gregory's Server@uncanny_kate This is why I do contract work for banks.
The code is often older than me. It works. It has worked for longer than my life. It just needs a bit of updating.
People joke about old code. Old code doesn't become old unless it is good.
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11 comments
 @idlestate @uncanny_kate None of them support unicode last I checked a decade ago. Why would they need to? It's all text based in the back end so 10000% screen reader friendly. @devxvda @idlestate @uncanny_kate Unicode might help represent names properly. What is the system using, EBCDIC on codepage 285? @patrick @idlestate @uncanny_kate You are talking about bespoke software custom made for a single client. It is whatever it is. And is updated whenever it is needed.  @devxvda I think that it depends on the code, and how old it is. I'm having to work with some very bad code that is 10 years old, only ten years but those are ten years of bits of updating shoved in there anyhow on a deadline. No one knows how it works. At this point doing updates takes 90% effort to untangle the spaghetti mess enough to even make an educated guess of where to put the update... And you never, ever know for sure what unexpected side effects you're introducing... @devxvda I asked a veteran colleague a question about the DB naming scheme and he laughed at me @alter_kaker @uncanny_kate Ten year old code is a LOT different to fifty year old code. I have stuff from a decade ago still running. Not great code, but does what it needs to. Fifty years ago "quarterly goals" didn't exist. It was ready when it was ready, because to do otherwise would cost half the company. @devxvda yeah. The old code jokes in my experience are more about 10-20yo code than 50. But my experience is pretty much all in retail and stuff like that |
@uncanny_kate AerLingus, as an example, use a booking system they designed (and sold to other airlines) that was made in the 1960s.
It still works. It still saves them money. Other airlines have moved on to different systems. The cost to replace far outweighs the cost to update.
I only know of the system going down twice in 40 years. Last time was a back-hoe cutting fibre lines