Software Longevity

I'm sure you'll see lots of examples in answers to your question. You can add millions of not-household-name business programs to the list.Any OS that has been around a while, and is still active (aka Windows, Linux, MacOS etc) will have lots and lots of long-life software.It's an interesting dynamic because newer programmers have this impression that "software has a short life-span before it's eclipsed by something new and shiny."In truth, it's the op

Look up golden age fallacy. Different projects have different requirements. You're selectively remembering the pieces of software that survived 50 years and forgetting the ones that didn't. I'm sure some projects written today will survive 50 years.

Most people believe that their software won't be used for more than a couple of years at most, especially young people who (seem to) think companies just rewrite everything to the latest and greatest (currently js/react; tomorrow something else) every few years. So they are not thinking about 2 years let alone 20 years.As someone who is maintaining products written (by me) 15 to 25 years ago, I know that I was absolutely wrong about that assumption. A company will not touch software

What you’re mentioning is only a particular kind of software, frontend-related. Backend and embedded stuff tends to live for decades.All major projects I’ve worked on still exist after 10-20 years, with much of the original code still in production. Some of it could use a rewrite, but it works and is being maintained.

Yes. Other things aside, there is the concept of "software rot" :). Look it up.

jesus christ, i dont think ive ever seen an article that beats around the bush for as long as this one does before finally getting to the point.anyways, for those who don't have the patience, the title is misleading. it's just some old software from the 90s. It's only ancient if you're one of those people who completely rewrites their entire code base from the ground up every two years because to pad out your resume with whatever bullshit new "framework" is in

Counterpoint: some types of software aren’t meant to last long. Even if it still builds and can be worked on later, the usecase itself may have changed or disappeared, or someone has probably come up with a new better version, so that it’s no longer worth it to continue.This probably doesn’t apply to many types of software over 6 months, but in a couple years or a couple decades. Some online services like CI or package managers will almost certainly provide backwards-compatible service until

Every generation of developers thinks their stuff will be replaced at some point but then they realize it's still used twenty years later. Happended with Y2K, Linux timestamps and a lot of other things.

25 years is a very long time in our industry Think what about pieces of software from 25 years ago are still maintained and working

Yep. Software can last surprisingly long time. Personally wrote a micro service with intended life-time of 6 months. 8 years on, it is still soldering on, surviving multiple attempts to replace it, with almost zero maintenance.