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Oldest Software Seen in Production?
Ian Bevan asks: "In my last job we were replacing a legacy system, written in COBOL and running on a Fujitsu mainframe since 1985 (it was a payroll application). A bespoke database application I wrote in 1989 was still being used, unmodified, last year. What's the oldest software you know of still in production? Anybody know of anything from the 70s, or even 60s ? What's it used for?" Has anyone seen software in production that is older than they are?
Any time you want to find the Ancient Ones, look at the heart of any big and old company. Invariably you'll find a package or two which they're afraid to touch for fear of breaking some business fundamental, i.e. payroll or inventory.
And Computer Associates seems to have their name on that package every time. From what I can tell, CA seems to specialize in buying up ancient software and maintaining it.
When I was doing database consulting, I ran across a number of payroll packages which had been purchased by CA, always running on some mainframe that'd dim the lights when it ran, but which seemed to do nothing that a desktop PC couldn't.
CA's got a good deal. From what I've seen, they don't update the software, save for critical fixes (Y2K, etc). They merely collect annual license fees on top of support costs.
When I'd tell companies that I could take users off their green screens without moving away from the CA package, rather than replacing the CA package as every other contractor had wanted to do, I'd always have their ear. Typically, I'd make a mint by making form applications and data importers/exporters which usually took longer to spec out than to write.
It's obviously the Windoze kernel ;)