[PLUG-TALK] Old languages never die ... they are sent to govenments

Paul Heinlein heinlein at madboa.com
Wed Apr 15 16:58:22 UTC 2020


On Wed, 15 Apr 2020, Rich Shepard wrote:

> On Wed, 15 Apr 2020, Mel wrote:
>
>> After IBM bought Sequent and I had trained my replacements, they had me
>> working on check sorters. They were using OS2 Warp. Basically rebranded
>> W95.
>
> While states encourage everyone to buy a new vehicle because it's 
> more fuel efficient they continue trying to run the government with 
> the hardware and software equivalents of Yugos, if not Nash 
> Metropolitans, or Ford Edsels.
>
> I remember reading a news article in the late 1990s that the Navy 
> was using NT4 to run fire control systems on its ships. "Stop 
> shooting at us! We need to reboot our fire control computers!" Blue 
> screen of death, indeed.

The automotive comparison is limited, IMO. Automobiles can be very 
complex, but the underlying job is simple: travel from point A to 
point B.

In contrast, the instant that software needs to interact with the real 
world (printing, firing AA missiles, controlling sensors, 
administering medication), complexity becomes a real problem. Modeling 
and predicting side-effects is beyond the capacity of most developers 
and test environments. Taking into account undocumented but known side 
effects from the system to be replaced is virtually impossible.

In other words, only empirical testing under a very complete 
regression system will do the trick. All of which is expensive, and 
the costs grow with the importance of the system to be replaced.

I'm not trying to provide an excuse for people whose job it is to 
maintain software-controlled systems over time, but it's reasonable to 
acknowledge that it's not as easy as point A to point B.

-- 
Paul Heinlein
heinlein at madboa.com
45°38' N, 122°6' W


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