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Dan Bricklin on Software That Lasts 200 Years
Lansdowne writes "Dan Bricklin, author of VisiCalc, has written a great new essay identifying a need for software that needs to last for decades or even centuries without replacement. Neither prepackaged nor custom-written software is fully able to meet the need, and he identifies how attributes of open source might help to produce long-lasting 'Societal Infrastructure Software'."
I think the subject line says it all. You can't worry about your software working for that long until your hardware can last that long.
~D
Must have had one hell of a beta test phase.
Omnis amans amens
It seems like most open source has been less than 1.0 for at least 200 years. But all for a quality product right? Oh you found a bug? Well thats because its pre-1.0!
No company in the world will ever try and develop software that never needs (costly) upgrades and add-ons. Take a look at Micrsofts behaviour with MS Office, it's a complete cash cow because they can update it when they want and force people into upgrading with changed document types. Even the open source community will be too interested in improving and adding on to thier pet projects to consider leaving it alone.
this article seems pretty flawed.
We need to start thinking about software in a way more like how we think about building bridges, dams, and sewers.
The fundamental difference being bridges cost more to alter than software does. And the capabilities of hardware allows more freedom in software, to which there is no correlation in bridges.
hmmm, just my 2 euro-cents.
I think the trick is to use simpler hardware, which is easy to replace.
Take todays computer: motherboard with one big black chip, CPU on it, network card also one chip on it, videocard is too impossible to figure out how it works. Due to the integrated design, you can't fix it if it is broken. And in five years you won't be able to replace it one-on-one.
On older hardware (8 bitters), you were able to repair it yourself because you knew how it worked and you know you were capable of replacing a failing chip. Even if you didn't have exactly the same chip, you can use one of a newer family which did the same but would be capable of switching much much faster.
bash$
I disagree. It's got nothing to do with the software but the data.
If the data format is clearly documentented, then it doesn't matter whether the application that generated it is open or closed.
True, you could argue that since the code is open the data format is also documented, but personally I'd find it easier if it was written in a properly structured document.
Otherwise you'd have to resort to learning and then plouging through an application written in some 200 year old programming language (by someone who possibly hacked it up with a hangover at the time) to try and understand what they were doing and why.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
I wonder if there will still be holes/bugs in Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 SP1 in 2204?
:-)
Now excuse me while I get back to writing my "Hello World" application that will last two centuries
vi
For Christ's sake, computers are mostly used as tools. And who keeps their old tools around for so long? Only neanderthals:...
Remember Y2K? Did anyone notice that the world didn't come crashing down on Jan. 1, 2000?
It seems that all those old mainframes running programs from the 60's weren't in such bad shape after all.
This is an over-simplification of course -- people did have to do some work to make sure there weren't any "Y2K" problems.
Constant standards are what is needed to make software last that long.
Language standards don't even last 200 years, how do we expect something as new as software standards to be more uniform than language standards? Language has been around for thousands of years and we still can't agree on that.
The preceding message was based on actual events. Only the names, locations and events have been changed.
We've had software and computers for ~30 years now
Going back 200 years, we only began the proper industrialization and everything was pretty much running on steam.
I think it's flawed to try to design software that lasts for decades or centuries.
The technology is constantly evolving, and as the hardware changes, so does the software.
If the hardware developement continues as it does, in 2200 we, or the people then, might be working with hardware running at terahertz speeds with 4096 bit architechtures.
Probably that's an underestimatement, since the evolving curves tend to be exponential.
I don't really think they would still need the software someone wrote for windows 95 200 years ago.
There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.
Standards are what must be designed to last for decades, not the software that conforms to the standards. Things like XML, RDF and POSIX will be supported for decades, if not centuries. Who cares if it is Linux running your POSIX apps, or FreeBSD, or HURD? I don't think it matters if software uses libxml2 to parse your XML data, or some yet-unconceived API--as long as it understands XML!
If it is stability and reliable infrastructure that is desired, it is standards that must remain constant and software that must evolve to make the standards work with new technology.
The point that the author makes here is really that without electricity we will lose great parts of recent history.
I disagree with the common comparison of Software to Civil Engineering and Standards Bodies.
Data Structures would be a better analogy, which Standards Bodies have done a really good job declaring. So in 200 years time you'll still be able to read the DVD data format (assuming the media is still good), even though the software that plays it will likely be different.
Software is more like mechanical engineering, where things do break and improvements keep being found. You wouldn't for example use a 1960's car engine in a car today, even though the basic principle is the same. No ones asks why they didn't get it right 40 years ago and aren't still using the same design.
Unfortunately, what would often be considered an early prototype in engineering, is often released as v1.0 -- the cause of which is a long post all unto itself.
Societal infrastructure is the key part here.
;) ) as a matter of fact, EVERYWHERE was very very different
..... Come to think of it - only some things change.
How many democracies are older than 200 years? How many governmental structures have survived 200 years? Bridges may last that long, but 200 years ago, Ireland was a very different place. America was a very different place, England was a very different place (see Ireland and America for why
200 years ago, the Americans loved the french for helping them in the civil war, the english hated the americans as barbarians, the Irish as "Paddies" and the Irish hated the english. The English hated the French
Back to the point - Software, or those parts of it that do qualify as societal infrastructure will have to change, simply to keep up with the rate of societal change and anything that lasts for 200 years is a very fundamental tool indeed.
Johns: Well, how does it look now? Riddick: Looks clear.
See also The Long Now Foundation.
I read their book in college and, though it is a bit pie-in-the-sky, I thought it raised some interesting ideas. One of their projects was to build a clock that could last a thousand years. When I moved to London one of the first things I did was go to see the thousand-year clock in the National Science Museum. There it was, it all it's broken-non-time-telling glory. About a month ago I checked up on it again. Status: still not fixed : \
It is not easy to design a 100year old language
hey, all this babbling about long-term and short-term reminds me of xterm. Soon xterm will be 200 years old. Or at least sooner than almost anything else. (except for getty ;)
#
#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
#
The problem with comparing computer practices with civil engineering practices, is the age of the two industries.
Software is such a young industry that best practices, standards etc. have yet to be settled upon and thus will be hard to implement. Most engineering practices have come about after centuries of development, I somehow feel software development will have to mature for a while before we can see similar licences and standards bodies.
There are already legacy COBOL programs that are key pieces of many businesses. Some of those are almost 30 years old. Not really exciting code, but still important to many businesses.
Those Duke Nukem guys should have this problem pegged by now...
davejenkins.com |
The nature of technology is to evolve over time. Only the most basic tools we have haven't changed significantly over time: things like the knife, the hammer, etc. Even the screwdriver has seen significant development in the 20th century (Torx screws, for instance).
Only those things for which the underlying rules don't change can remain constant over time. Software is especially vulnerable to change over time because the platforms it depends on, both other pieces of software (like operating systems) and hardware, change significantly over time. 200 years ago, computers weren't even a glimmer in Charles Babbage's eye.
And as much as technology has changed over that period of time, so have the needs of society. And since software is written to fulfull those needs, it's absurd to even ask it to live much longer than a lifetime. About the only kind of software that could possibly live that long would be games, and even then only a select few have that kind of timelessness.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
there is an important difference between tools and infrastructure. true, much software is used as tools--for accomplishing discrete tasks that evolve as societies and technology evolves. but much software--databases, routers, control devices for physical infrastructure, etc--is used more as infrastructure; that is, as a resource expected to be reliable and predictable by many users and necessary for accomplishing other tasks that ride on top of it, including employing new tools.
infrastructure, because of its multi-user character and the fact that other things are designed to work on top of it, has to have lasting standards--if road lanes suddenly start to become half or double the width, then cars, trucks, traffic flows, etc will all be affected. even if some small technical reason might make it be reasonable to change them, their character as infrastructure means that the long term reliability of how they work is more important than short term technical considerations.
in other words, it would probably be silly at this point to try to design user interfaces, web browsers, etc. that last 200 years, because they are still rapidly evolving. however it makes a great deal of sense to start designing standards for data storage and interface, as well as actual 'infrastructure' software to last a long time because more users (including developers of more 'tool-like' software) benefit from its stability than from its instability.
Just find me a customer that wants to pay for "robustness, testing, maintainability, ease of replacement, security, and verifiability" and I'll deliver.
Sure it is possible to write a program that is platform independent and could possible run for 200 years. But the problem is this. How many organizations can last for 200 years without changing their policies or without society changing. Lets compare us Now and 200 years ago 1804. How many companies have lasted sense 1804 not to many. And all of them have changed the way that they did business since then. How many companies 200 years ago would have enough foresight to allow policies for IT workers. Maybe 1 who was swiftly locked away for his crazy talk. Also a lot of todays terminology will go away in 200 year. I predict the term "Race" would be an out dated word confined to the old literature and newspapers, this is because with the steady decline in racial prejudice and inter racial marriages. It would be like 200 years ago a business man will ask you for your religion in order for them to decide to do business with or not, and now there would be some problems even if they asked as just a personal question. Or say we get visited by space aliens, Sex: M F X A I C. Who know what new and unheard of categories will be added or perhaps a method of doing things is drastically changed who even what the company does changes, heck the company I worked for started repairing mainframes, now we do mostly IT Consulting, and that is in 10 years imagine 200 year.
So to make a program this customizable you need to make it a programming language with everything to you need to add and delete change and alter over time. Now even programming languages think Fortran 30 years ago it was the most popular language out there. And now it is tossed aside for the newer languages, even with fortran compilers for linux, most people will rewrite their fortran code to a more modern language then just port it. To take advantage of new features such as GUI, Internet Connectivity, Color Printing, Web Access. More thing that seemed useless or impossible 30 years ago, are now becoming important. Sure it is possible to make a program run for 200 years. But is is possible to make it useful for 200 year. And beside all this extra design time to make a program that can run for 200 years will cost a lot of money and time to do. Are the users of the applications are willing to pay $1,000,000 for a java program that number crunches their numbers. Or will they pay $50,000 for a program that will last them 10 years, and will be a lot less bloated and simpler to use.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I love the way that everyone presents written records as a good example of a "perpetual" medium which surpasses digital.
You may note that the author says "you can read 100-year-old newspapers *on* *microfiche*". This point practically jumps up and down to be noticed - even in the world of printing, paper copies are not seen as suitable for long-term storage, due to difficulties of preservation and physical bulk. So these paper copies are transferred to some other medium for long-term storage. This medium relies on readers existing - if all companies making microfiche readers went out of business (which probably won't be too many years ahead) then the microfiches will be unreadable. And the microfiches themselves are fragile - a scratch in the wrong place will make it difficult to read, and it's on plastic which will degrade over time.
Why should digital be any different? If you want ultra-long-term storage of digital data, use punch holes in gold sheets. Otherwise you use a storage medium which gives you a reasonable storage size and reasonable data security.
On reading the data back, suppose microfiche readers went obsolete and you couldn't buy them. The method of reading the data is still known and recorded, and can be reconstructed by someone needing to get the data back. Similarly, the most common bulk storage methods today are the CD-R and the DVD+/-R (tape backups are practically obsolete). Now the standard for data storage on CD and DVD is, well, *standard*. So if in 200 years time someone wants to read one back, they could build a CD player from first principles.
Grab.
- Move the software to a new box (but similar) since the old one is worn out or not fast enough or
... In practice this is not too difficult since you can either just copy the binaries or buy new ones orThis I would not call a real change and is not too expensive.
- Move the software to a new (or much changed [the current] version of the same one) operating system.
This is expensive as there is a lot of recoding that must be done and then work configuring it on the new platform.
Note that the above is only valid if the software being copied does not really change it's functionality as the customer has not changed the requirement spec.One of the nice things about Unix (Linux/...) is that you can still run very old software on new boxes with at most minimal changes - I still use code that I first wrote some 20 years ago.
There has been much assumption in this discussion that the whole system (hardware, OS, software) has to live unchanged for many years; I think that is missing the point as the true cost of software change is only big in case (2) above.
Note that some software does need to be regularily changed, eg payroll - because the governments change the rules every year or two.
What's needed is ink and paper. It's our proven technology for archiving. Micro fiche and magnetic storage devices are now more prevalent than any time before but the book industry and published journals and daily newspapers show no sign of diminishing. And as the article points out newspapers dating back 200 years are still available in the public libraries. Electronic voting protocol is just now hashing out whether a paper trail is prudent. Granted the article rightly points out the need to develop an archiving industry that is able to meet the needs for computers to replace paper, based archiving but as long as hardware development thrives in an open competitive economy the market will dictate the timing of implementing the necessary hardware. Unless some body like the library of congress undertakes financing the necessary hardware and software.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
I think there was a /. post some time ago (that I cannot seem to locate right now) that talked about the freeware paradox: The better freeware becomes the less you make on support.
So, in order to survive I guess you have to make shitty sw and do lots of marketing to sell your products anyway.
Hmm, sounds familiar in some way...
In Belgium, notary's still pay law students to copy by hand important documents on thick books, made from acid-free paper and solidly bound together. Stacked in a basement, you can throw a jerrycan of gasoline over them and set fire to it. You will lose (almost) nothing. Instead of relying on laser discs (see other post), print everything out and count on OCR.
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
I've yet to meet a client commissioning a project who knew well how his own business operated, still less was able to understand how any knowledge he did have might be usefully turned into a specification. One of the reasons some software projects have a short life is that the intended users fundamentally misunderstood how their business worked, or that its way of working was likely to change.
The idea of software that lasts 200 years reminded me of a discussion on the radio the other day about the origin of a joke: "I've had this broom 50 years, its had 5 new heads and 3 new handles". The identity issue played with here dates back at least to Plutarch's Ship of Theseus - if you keep replacing parts of a thing, until no original parts remain, is it still the same thing?
The relevance to software is captured with an example: Is Linux still Linux? How much remains of the kernel originally published by Linus? Would would you say that Linux has been around for X years (pick X to suit)?
Most people would agree that it's still Linux. What Linux, the broom, and Theseus' ship have in common is that they could be modified to meet the demands of time, while retaining their identity.
I've always thought that maintainability is the highest virtue software can strive for, above other quality-oriented goals like being bug-free, or performant. If its buggy, but maintainable, it can be fixed; if its slow, but maintainable, we can make it faster. I think it could also be argued that software, like Theseus' ship, needs to be maintainable to last 200 years; but the version 200 years from now may not resemble the original in the slightest.
Just my 2c
Baz
- TeX user manual
- TeX commented source code
- Metafont user manual
- Metafont commented source code
- The Metafont programms to generate the computer modern fonts
What is that good for?If you, say in 500 years, get a copy of these 5 volumes (and if they are printed on good paper, there is good chance that these survive). You just need some kind of computing device and the skillset to implement some easy pascal like programming language. Then you type in the programms and fonts from this book and voila, you have working a TeX system!
Of course you need to write a .dvi driver for whatever output device you want to need and have at that time.
If you now find some .tex source of one of Knuth's books, be it in print or some crude hyperflux memory cube, you are then able to reproduce that book in the quality Knuth intended it to have!
Thus TeX is explicitly developed to transfer the typographic quality of Knuth's books into the future, without depending that lots of software vendors establish lots of data format (e.g. Word 2325 to Wort 2326) converters!
Regards,
Marc
When i design projects, i tend to think more about keeping the data clean, simple and robust over time, rather than the ease which certian applications can reproduce it.
For example, when i designed KML, the idea was that it was meant to be a robust format that could be defined outside the context of any word-processor, and ultimately aimed at HTML, TeX, etc. At the moment, it is Regina REXX's job to render my markup. Nothing stops this from becoming Perl's or CEnvi's job! It's just a matter of writing a new parsing engine.
Because it is not something like HTML or TeX or RTF, i have considerable control over the format, and i can map several internal styles onto the same output, eg like {emphasis} vs {bold} in html. But the thing can be to the structure of the document.
It is more data standard, rather than program standard that is important. The latter is also important, since we don't want to either run dusty decks or old programs.
But what can you expect from an upgrades-driven market?
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
The Long Now Foundation: 10,000 Year Clock and Library Long Now is the brainchild of Stewart Brand.
-kgj
-kgj
No vi is correct, the article is about software, not operating systems! :D
Music is everybody's possession.
It's only publishers who think that people own it.
Fuck Beta
~John Lenno
In A Deepness in the Sky, Vinge posits a collection of software of ancient origins that handles all of the Qeng Ho's automation. This software is never replaced, but simply evolves as better ideas appear. While not technically open source (the Qeng Ho considered this software to be one of their proprietary advantages), it is open to every member of the group. By the time of Pham Nuwen, it had existed in some form or another for literally thousands of years, and over that time had been inspected by thousands of people.
[ home ]
See, this happens when you use 200 year old speech recognition software...
...I agree heartily, but were the United States is concerned, this will probably never happen. The brand of capitalism that currently drives the U.S. is not friendly to goods and services that are expected to last a long time. In the past, you could buy a TV and the company would guarantee it's picture tube for up to ten years. These days you're lucky to find a TV with a five year guarantee on the picture tube and in most cases you are forced into buying an extended warranty that you have to renew.
The way that homes were built in the early part of the 20th century, those homes could be expected to still last up to 100+ years. These days, the cheap 'lick em and stick em' jobs that people pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for are certain to start falling apart in 10-25 years. I know this because I used to work on some of them. The materials are not meant to last. Many of the homes develop probles with the plumbing, roof, even the electrical in some cases. A lot of these homes can't stand up to tornadoes as well as the old houses could. There was a neighborhood in a city south of me where all the bran new houses were torn apart by a tornado. These houses were built in the late 1980s and 1990s. Within a few blocks, there were a few old farm houses that were unscathed. My point is that houses these days are made of crap, more expensive and are not built to last. They are essentially disposable after one generation grows up in them (while having to fix problems).
This is all evidence of the disposable, recurring payment culture of the U.S. today. I exclude other countries even though many of them have the same problem, but to a lesser extent. Those other countries are fr more likely to try and build a long-lasting, open source infrastructure. When I was a kid in the 70s, recurring fees were rare other than utilities and mortgage or car payments. Today, you can get nearly anything for a recurring fee. Although all the fees themselves are small, they total to whopping bills if a person needs or wants all those goods and services. Whatever happened to the day when you could buy something and it was yours. 100%. No strings attached. No recurring fees. Just yours. Sure there are a few things, but keep in mind that recurring fee or not, they are not built to last. Durability is anathema to profit in the new American way. The idea of having long-lasting, open source/free software is going to have a lot of opponents in the American software business soley because there is money to be made.
Un-news
In A Deepness in the Sky, Vinge posits a collection of software of ancient origins that handles all of the Qeng Ho's automation.
If you calculate the offset between the starting date of their oldest calendar and the epoch date of their software, it seems that their software is based on something written in the '70s, or at least that's when its calendar started.
Things that make you go hmmm...
That's not to say that the change wasn't needed, as it was, because of other problems, which we started discovering during the course of the project, but then again, they never should've gone to the software they were running in the first place, as it didn't have a benefit/cost ratio better than the software they were on originally.
Of course, we also went through 4 different PMs on the project, had 'co-project managers' at one point, and I'd get bitched at for bringing up flaws in the project plan, even though I had been told in the first meeting that I was the technical oversight, and if something went wrong, it'd be my fault.
From my experience, a good project comes when the programmers know what the goals and objectives of the organization are, and are then told what their constraints are (budget, time, etc), to make it happen. It rarely comes when the higher level mangers decide on the solution, and then tell you how you have to build it. For some reason, I got yelled at after putting up the following sign in my cubicle:
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Another problem is the advent of the GUI. Give a user, or even a programmer, a text-oriented application today and be prepared for much wailing and gnashing of teeth. As someone who started writing programs on mainframes, it doesn't bother me, but I've seen users look at me like I'm some kind of Martian when I give them a command-line program to solve a problem, even though it is supplied with step-by-step documentation on how to use it.
Where are we today? I don't believe that there has been much progress made in recent years. You can write portable programs in COBOL, FORTRAN and Ada. ISO Pascal and ANSI BASIC seem to be near extinction. Portable programs are theoretically possible in C, but the pitfalls and temptations are many. I'm not a database programmer, but I would hope that there is a portable subset of SQL that would support the portable use of RDBMS. Why should I know or care that the system is using Oracle or SQL Server?
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I used to work for a rather large telco-datacenter. They were using software built in 1970, to provision internet connectivity.
Telnet in (pick a username and try PASSWORD for the password) 75% of users were set up with default passwords. 50% of the active users were employees who left the company several years prior.
My team coded a new system from the ground up. Taking into account all the changes in the past 30 or so years. It was large roboust and elegant. Anyone who used the old system was completely blow away by the new system... Except the lead consultant from Accenturd. After 5 mins of our hour presentation, he cut us short and went on to be little us.... "anyone can code", " its just a website", ya know your company hired US to do that FOR you.
In the end accenturd decided that our 30 year old system would be just fine with a few modifiactions.. Sure the old system needs a team of 60, vs the team of 6 our NEW system required. But thats of little consequence.
$1 million - accenturd charge for simple modifications to a 30 year old system.
..VS..
Free ground up system built by internal employees, who worked with the old system on a daily basis.
The final descision was made by the person who originally spent the $1 million to accenturd. Seems he didnt want to admit he wasted $1 million for something we coulda gotten internally, for free.
There is no reason code should be running 30 years. I can assure you the original developer never intended 30 year life cycle on his code.
Old code still WORKED, that coder impresses me.
Old code was way obsolete, managment depresses me.
WrongWay
217 years and counting.... of course, it's had 27 patches applied to it.
Sometimes seventeen/Syllables aren't enough to/Express a complete
The author describes a lot of what's wrong with software development right now. Being on the admin side of things, I've often had to deal with very buggy stuff custom-written by an internal IT department. Lots of key systems at large companies are still running on either the original hardware or upgraded versions of the platform. (There was an article a while back about VAX finally being killed by HP...that should tell you something.) Any improvements are hindered by the original framework (think screen-scraping apps, multiple file format translations, etc.)
Civil engineers also run into this problem. For instance, take any large city whose highway system was built more than 50 years ago (NYC and Boston come to mind immediately.) No one ever dreamed that everyone would have their own car and stop using the trains/buses/ferries to commute to work. Therefore, overcapacity was never seen as a problem, and the rush hours just get longer every year as everyone tries to stagger their commutes. And since the roads are right next to buildings, in-place upgrades are very rare.
I think that once the whole IT labor market shakes itself out, software engineering will become another branch of traditional engineering. Just like power plants, dams, airports, etc., we're now dependent on computers, and it's time to put some standards into place. Software needs to be built such that it's portable, easily understood by a similarly-trained engineer, and conducive to improvements. In other words, it needs to be able to outlive the coder.
There is a software and hardware system that my company is designing to be maintainable until 2048. It has a long and well funded development cycle. We are developing version 6.0. Its funny though, the product has only ever been tested since we developed it over thirty years ago. And the design goal is to make it so well and in such quantity that it is never used. What is it?
Lisp is about 50.
If the data formats are standardized it should not matter what kind of hardware or media is used, the data just migrates from one technical platform to another.
I firmly believe that without this we will lose a significant part of our history. Current history is known because of durable "storage" like paper and fossiles, stone tablets or murals. The materials are all degrading but last longer then something digital.
If we keep on trusting on technology we use right now we would be very lucky if anyone in the near future would be capable of finding anything significant which would be representable of our time. All our information is being recorded in digital format. This includes important things like presidential speeches, signed documents etc.
This society is more and more dependent on electronic information. Alot of information isn't available in printing anymore let alone in a true durable format. If for some reason there will be some major catastrophy any survivors' offspring in the future will know nothing about this age and it's mistakes and would not learn a thing about it.
We had the opportunity to study history because of the durability of it's information. Our information, however, doesn't even last a lifetime.
if he thinks ANY software could last a century or more. Or even SHOULD so last.
HUMANS won't last through this century! How does he expect software to do so?
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Software however written is capable of running for as long as it is viable to the market. It's not an issue of hardware or interdependency between software sources. It's that our market and general theory of technology is destructive/creative in nature. We rebuild software not because it isn't capable of running for centuries but because the users of that software have been emboldened to think creatively about new applications. Our clients could run the software they have for a long period of time. We build platforms that support 5-10 years of enhancement. But the market whether external or internal requires us to innovate rapidly. To create software that last centuries you would need to kill the creative process that is technology. The social process that defines us as humans.
Seems silly to me when you consider even human language has changed so much in the past 100-200 years. Just think what it will look like in 100+ years. If you take any novel or movie today, aren't they just rewritten rehashes of plots that have existed for the past 1000+ years? Important software, like important ideas will be maintained, migrated, changed, morphed and improved upon. The really bad ideas will hopefully decay out of existence. Really, who the &$^% cares what was in our Oracle DB 100 years from now?
I take a bow to the report and the author.
Being a computer programmer, I wouldn't call myself a 'Software Engineer' due to the appalling state of writing software in its current state. There has been for quite some time this in-bred mentality of Versions, that nothing is ever finished, mostly driven by commercial greed - despite the huge advances in computer power, our OS'es and their applications are still struggling to keep up with an Amiga, for chrissake.
Moreover, it can have lethal consequences; for example, radiation treatment, or airplane control. Deaths ensued. "Sorry that your college outing ended in all their deaths, we were running 1.1.3 of the aileron system."
Sure, even mechanical engineers get it wrong, but their main onus is to make something that will work, not, as in the software case, 'get it out now, fix it later'.
So, if someone says they are a 'Software Engineer', ask them, what is it they do that merits the 'Engineer' tag - would they build a bridge that lasts? Nope.
We build disposable software, because computers are still disposable.
Not because they can't be built to last, but because they quickly become obsolete.
If Moore's law continues to hold for 40 years, computers will be over a million times more powerful than they are now, the cheapest drive you could buy would hold more than a petabyte, and we'll be saying things like "I remember when a thousand bucks for a terabyte of ram seemed like a good deal, and now I can't even buy a ram stick that small".
Once the breakneck pace of expansion stops (or at least slows to a reasonable rate) then we should look at making software that lasts.
Video compression technology is big business today, but it's probably going to seem like a silly idea in the future.
We don't need buggy whips that last 200 years.
-- less is better.
You know why we can drive the latest vehicle over an old bridge, or fill a new high-tech water bottle from an old well's pump? It's because the way water works has stayed the same - it's a liquid with certain wonderful properties - and the way bridges "interface" with land vehicles has stayed the same.
When we have constantly changing standards, often incompatible with earlier ones, software that works wonderfully with the earlier one will die. This isn't the software's fault any more than it would be the pump manufacturers fault if H2O's density suddenly rose (or viscosity or something).
It's all about the standards.
I [may] disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
I used to subscribe to this way of thinking - after all "I'll always have a car payment" and
"As long as I can make the minimum payment, it doesn't matter what my credit card balance is."
This was foolish youth talking, and 'buy now, pay later' immediate gratification marketing that led me for years.
I had a wise aunt and uncle who advised me that I could spend 10% more than I earned, or 10% less. The first way I'd sweat payments for the rest of my life, the second way I'd always have money in my pocket. They were right!
Another great piece of advice from them was "buy a car you can pay off in 3 years. Keep it 6. After the loan is paid off, pay a savings account the same car payment. Then go pay cash for your replacement car. Keep paying yourself, and you'll never need to borrow money for a car loan again." If the next car costs more than the first, keep the first until the savings account has enough to cover the next car.
This REALLY works! I paid cash for my last two cars. I no longer buy what I don't have cash for, and I'm approaching paying off my house, too. Not in the next year or two, but long before 30 years have passed.
A side benefit is that I think much more about whether I really want to spend that extra money on options or gadgets when I'm taking greenbacks out of my wallet!
It is possible to live without debt, even in the US.
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
The Clock of the Long Now is a clock designed Danny Hillis to last 10,000 years with maintenance using only Bronze Age technology. Ticking will be avoided. The century hand will advance every 100 years, and the cuckoo will come out on the millennium. The first 9 foot tall prototype was built in time for "New Year's Eve 01999" (note extra digit, and the second is under construction now.
One might argue that the clock incorporates firmware, in the sense that there will be relatively complex algorithms to maintain accuracy by comparing different timing signals, and simpler algorithms to decide when to move the century hand, or cuckoo the millennium. It's not a stored-program system though, so it doesn't meet the criteria that the Babbage engines meet. Nevertheless, this is a good example of hardware designed realistically to operate continuously for 10 millennia. For this project Hillis invented a mechanical serial-bit-adder, a mechanical digital logic element, which evidently lacks the "wearing problem" of a standard clock mechanism. The clock knows about leap years and such.
The website has images of the prototypes and the design, but I'm on dialup so I didn't look at them. The Principles Page discusses some of the problems to be overcome. For example, power source - right now Hillis is tending toward a temperature-based power source - and maintaining accuracy, which may be based on a phase locked loop using a mechanical oscillator and solar alignment. There are ways to support the foundation, such as buying Brand's Book, or Eno's tunes
IMHO he might want to use three or four other checks as well. An extension of phase locking can work well with multiple nodes in a network, e.g., the multiple nodes in the human heart rhythm controller. Such networks rapidly converge to a common cycle, and this would provide additional reliability. The NTP network time algorithm is based on multiple sources of the same type, but analogous in concept. Just for fun, it'd be great if the clock also included a display of the 64-bit Unix time, in binary!
This Wired article was written by Danny Hillis about his original idea. The Long Now Website has other interesting links about long term stuff. Hillis has some interesting friends, like Brian Eno who named "The Clock of the Long Now", and Stewart Brand. Other links: Intro to Brand talk, The actual talk. Buy the book, or the Eno CD "January 07003" to support the foundation.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
Many things in society are long-term
Not really true.
Those historical buildings? They've been gutted and rebuilt from the inside out at least once during the past 50 years for the installation central air conditioning and elevators for the handicapped. And they're the exception to the rule. Few commercial buildings go more than 15 years without major renovation and few residential buildings make it more than 30.
Roads? Sure, US Route 1 does still travel approximately the same route but its repaved frequently, expanded and changed frequently, and its been supplanted in its original purpose as the major east-coast north-south route by Interstate 95. And even Route 1 has existed for less than a century. Before automobiles at the begining of the 20th century, there was no need for anything like it. Before automobiles, who could conceive of a multilane asphalt highway that needed to sustain speeds over 500 miles per day? How could yesteryear's engineers possibly plan for it?
The US constitution, the foundation of our law, has seen two major overhauls in the past two centuries: first due to the civil war and again because of the great depression. Even where parts of the text remain the same, their meanings have been drastically altered by the courts. Free speech has become freedom of expression. The right to bear arms somehow doesn't exist at all inside Washington DC except for police. The states have gone from being the primary seats of governance to being almost entirely subsidiary to the federal government. We're living under an almost totally different government than what saw the dawn of the 19th century.
Even the Catholic Church publishes a new catechism each year, a book which defines the religion. You'd think during two millennia they'd figure it out once and for all, yet it continues to evolve and change.
Few things last, either in their original purpose or their original design. They're continuously rebuilt, redesigned and reinvented... Even things like roads, buildings and governments for which our design experience goes back thousands of years.
Our software experience goes back 40 years, if you can call what we did 40 years ago software by any current definition. Why should we build it to last longer than than the roads and buildings, and indeed longer than software in any form has existed?
I'm sorry, but I'm not smart enough to successfully plan ahead two centuries and neither are you.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
...not necessarily self-modifying, but at least self-upgrading. For instance, imagine a system that is part of the "societal infrastructure." This system is running a database... we'll assume for the moment that it's MySQL. MySQL releases a new version. The database (either automatically or at the DBA's request) patches the running binary. There is a short delay of lag while the caches are repopulated, and then the new version is running. Perhaps a "checkChangelog()" function is called, reading a machine-readable changelog to determine if there's any changes to input/output/config files that it needs to know about... no downtime, no kill -HUP, nothing.
I mod down pyramid schemes in sigs.
Right now, somewhere, there is a government agency putting important data into long term storage, which was created in Microsoft Word. In a few years that data may be unreadable, not because the medium has deteriorated, but because the software that created it will have evolved or no longer exist.
This is just one example of how proprietary formats are bad for storing important data, long term. This problem was noted years ago when it was discovered that VA tapes, tucked away in underground facilities back in the 60's, could no longer be read because the software that created them is gone.
An ideal data scheme would include information which describes the data being stored along with the data itself. An example is XML. This concept needs to be pushed.
It is more likely that we can solve the problem of proprietary data storage schemes long before we can implement 200 year software.
Proverbs 21:19