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What Is the Oldest Code Written Still Running?
Consul writes "What is the oldest piece of code that is still in use today, that has not actually been retyped or reimplemented in some way? By 'piece of code,' I'm of course referring to a complete algorithm, and not just a single line." The question would have a different answer if emulation, in multiple layers, is allowed.
Interesting, a quick search on Google reveals that there isn't much on this topic other than people talking about the oldest computer they have. One post talks about some old IBM Series 1's and S/360/30. One good one is to say the computers onboard some of the oldest spacecrafts like Pioneer 10 (1972), Voyager I and II (1977). Although they haven't received anything from Pioneer 10 since 2002. But you could say that the computer in it might still be running.
Somehow I doubt that many of the people that would be running such old computers such as ones from before 1970 would be reading Slashdot. And if you think about it, people conceptulized computers differently back then. I think you'd be hard pressed to find mention of a specific program but more of mention of a computer itself. Its too bad there is such a big disconnect between the generations of computer programmers and administrators.
...which was implanted in his chest shortly before his escape from the Viet Cong. 1,700 lines of COBOL, and still going strong!
Sadly, it has a Y2K bug. This explains why the John McCain of 2008 is not the same as the one from eight years ago.
Genetic code.
it's been around forever. you can be more helpful than you might have imagined. there are still some choices. if they do not suit you, consider the likely results of continuing to follow the corepirate nazi hypenosys story LIEn, whereas anything of relevance is replaced almost instantly with pr ?firm? scriptdead mindphuking propaganda or 'celebrity' trivia 'foam'. meanwhile; don't forget to get a little more oxygen on yOUR brain, & look up in the sky from time to time, starting early in the day. there's lots going on up there.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071229/ap_on_sc/ye_climate_records;_ylt=A0WTcVgednZHP2gB9wms0NUE
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080108/ts_alt_afp/ushealthfrancemortality;_ylt=A9G_RngbRIVHsYAAfCas0NUE
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/31/opinion/31mon1.html?em&ex=1199336400&en=c4b5414371631707&ei=5087%0A
is it time to get real yet? A LOT of energy is being squandered in attempts to keep US in the dark. in the end (give or take a few 1000 years), the creators will prevail (world without end, etc...), as it has always been. the process of gaining yOUR release from the current hostage situation may not be what you might think it is. butt of course, most of US don't know, or care what a precarious/fatal situation we're in. for example; the insidious attempts by the felonious corepirate nazi execrable to block the suns' light, interfering with a requirement (sunlight) for us to stay healthy/alive. it's likely not good for yOUR health/memories 'else they'd be bragging about it? we're intending for the whoreabully deceptive (they'll do ANYTHING for a bit more monIE/power) felons to give up/fail even further, in attempting to control the 'weather', as well as a # of other things/events.
http://video.google.com/videosearch?hl=en&q=video+cloud+spraying
dictator style micro management has never worked (for very long). it's an illness. tie that with life0cidal aggression & softwar gangster style bullying, & what do we have? a greed/fear/ego based recipe for disaster. meanwhile, you can help to stop the bleeding (loss of life & limb);
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/12/28/vermont.banning.bush.ap/index.html
the bleeding must be stopped before any healing can begin. jailing a couple of corepirate nazi hired goons would send a clear message to the rest of the world from US. any truthful look at the 'scorecard' would reveal that we are a society in decline/deep doo-doo, despite all of the scriptdead pr ?firm? generated drum beating & flag waving propaganda that we are constantly bombarded with. is it time to get real yet? please consider carefully ALL of yOUR other 'options'. the creators will prevail. as it has always been.
corepirate nazi execrable costs outweigh benefits
(Score:-)mynuts won, the king is a fink)
by ourselves on everyday 24/7
as there are no benefits, just more&more death/debt & disruption. fortunately there's an 'army' of light bringers, coming yOUR way. the little ones/innocents must/will be protected. after the big flash, ALL of yOUR imaginary 'borders' may blur a bit? for each of the creators' innocents harmed in any way, there is a debt that must/will be repaid by you/us, as the perpetrators/minions of unprecedented evile, will not be available. 'vote' with (what's left in) yOUR wallet, & by your behaviors. help bring an end to unprecedented evile's manifestation through yOUR owned felonious corepirate nazi glowbull warmongering execrable. some of US should consider ourselves somewhat fortunate to be among those scheduled to survive after the big flash/implementation of the creators' wwwildly popular planet/population rescue initiative/mandate. it's right in the manual, 'world without end', etc.... as we all ?know?, change is inevitable, & denying/ignoring gravity, logic, morality, etc..., is only possible, on a temporary basis. concern about the course of events that will occur should the life0cidal execrable fail to be intervened upon is in order. 'do not be dismayed' (also from
but I've got money that says the government owns it.
That depends on whether or not you are restricting it to digital code or not. I'm guessing RNA is pretty ancient.
Fortran code, from 1954. I'm not sure if there is anything still around but it wouldn't surprise me.
...Notepad?
;)
I kid, I kid
"Never try to tell everything you know. It may take too short a time."
Da-da Vinci code?
Which I wrote back in the days when Java was just released ;-)
10 testing
20 goto 10
Orbis terrarum est non altus satis
Universe!
- God
world
A lot of the big banks, insurance companies, payments processors, etc have had mainframes for a long time and a lot of that code really doesn't need too much modernization. The early programmers were a lot more rigorous than the new crowd and some of the candidates for "oldest code still used" could possibly be some mundane thing that compounds interest or something like that. They've surely upgraded to newer hardware but a lot of the old code doesn't necessarily need updating to run on that hardware.
I read once about some very old systems still running at IRS computers. It is so old that it would take an astronomical budget to port it.
DNA in your Linux: DNALinux
And who are you to say that humans are not carbon-based computers?
10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD"
20 GOTO 10
Hey, at least it's more than "one line of code"
There's still code running for nuclear power plants that was written in the 60's or earlier; given the challenge of certifying emulators we ran it on the original machines; embedded code in machinery was probably been older. Although, most really old stuff was mechanical not based on ICs.
Some military hardware may be even older; reliability and certainty is often more important than the latest and greatest.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Check the various satellites. Voyager 1 is about 31 years old and significant portions of its programming remain unchanged. It is expected to keep running until about 2020. There are older operational satellites, but I'm not sure which ones were hardwired vs programmable controllers.
20 Dixit quoque Deus "Fiat firmamentum in medio aquarum"
You are not presenting any real evidence that it is the case. You are just saying this because it sounds likely to be true, but do you have any hard evidence to back it up?
Unfortunately, it looks like people aren't going to take this question seriously.
Cobol!
No, no sig. Really.
ThePromenader
http://xkcd.com/224/
A lawyer friend of mine has good reasons to believe SCO has the response to this question. Unfortunately he can't show off the meat, but it is certainly older than any other piece of code.
I work in a big bank in France and i know we had, a few years ago, some code from 70's in Cobol for some core products.
I tend to believe that the code which is written today will last much less longer than code which was written 30 years ago. And this is somehow strange, since 30 years ago the computer costed much more than the human programmer (while the opposite is true today). On the other hand, some embedded code surely will last for long (as the space examples above).
Joan Rivers
If this is an AskSlashdot then label it as such.
Knowing full well that I haven't got a clue, my guess would still be microcode embedded in some special purpose device - i.e. not a general purpose computer.
:)
I don't remember when digital watches started appearing, but I suppose there's a bit of code in there? Various industrial machines from waaay back that are still in use ought to be good candidates as well.
Kudos to Consul for a remarkably interesting Ask Slashdot. The best one I've seen in a long while
May we live long and die out
I wonder if there are any Jacquard looms still running.
"Firmware" updates have been occasionally uploaded to the Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft when necessary.
Da Blog
...but some insensitive clod recently deleted it.
Supposedly still uses CP/M machines with 8" floppies.
What's the oldest piece of code you can get running? Either on emulation or on original hardware. Be creative, winner gets... well, kudos. But that's gotta count for something on Slashdot right? :^P
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
...because even if the code hasn't been replaced, you can bet the source control software has. My guess would be old cores of for example banking systems, I know there our company has COBOL code written in the 60s and the system is still in COBOL and in use today. If someone wrote a correct, useful algorithm back then it could very easily still exist today. I can at least assure you that they don't exactly do rewrites very often...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
some i can think o are the software running on the computers in Voyager 1,2 also Pioneer 10, 11 all are still up and running
"I don't pitch OpenSUSE Linux to my friends, i let Microsoft do it for me
That's a program from the very late 60s or early 70s on IBM mainframes; it's still used in JCL for strange reasons.
It's in assembler, but the C equivalent would be something like exit(0).
John Roth
My guess is that the oldest code is in some embedded processor somewhere, as those tend to last forever and not be changed, such as the computers controlling elevators and microwaves and the like.
I would also guess that this was not what the author had in mind.
I'd say about 25 years!
Once they rebuilt the Manchester Mk. 1 ten years ago, Alan Turing's program became the oldest program runnable without emulation. It clocks in at 60 years old, being written in 1948. The code finds the highest common factor between any two integers expressable in 32 bits. Not bad, given that the Mk. 1 had only one arithmetic operator, subtract.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
1 "Let there be light"
2 create universe()
3 while (1)
4 # I'll finish this up later
Does Pythagoras's formula count? Or Euclid's approximation for the square root of 2? I mean, they basically use the same formulas, regardless of programming language.
open source modern art: laser taggi
The Science Museum has card decks for Jacquard looms that are more than a century old. Bletchley Park has a replica Colossus machine, which needs programming in the shape of switch positions. IDK if the code they use was preserved, or reverse engineered along with the rest of the machine, though.
I think the question could stand to be a little more specific in terms of the definitions of "code" and "running," but I'm sure somewhere someone is using punch cards to machine things ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_Numerical_Control ). I've seen a lot of ancient machines like this, mostly because they are designed for very long lifetimes, but also because generally they are given the tlc of the machinists that use them.
IEFBR14, the good old chunk of do-nothing code, the most universal executable used by anyone who ever wrote JCL.
It really does that - nothing. IEF is the code prefix, since all code *must* be prefixed, after all. BR14 stands for "Branch to Register 14", which with the old code linkages conventions means "return and exit". In JCL it's commonly used simply to attach, allocate, and deallocate files. In other words, used for its side-effects with the file allocation parameters. I haven't written any JCL in probably 20+ years, or I'd give an example. Anything I'd show now would likely be too badly riddled with errors to give the true, scrumptious feel.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Compilers themselves would have changed over time, but the many of the runtime function implementations, I guess, would have remained the same.
FANG, from 1972, is probably one of the oldest applications you can still download and run. It's a copying utility for UNIVAC mainframes. UNIVAC Exec 8 was way ahead of its time, with full support for threads, multiprocessors, and concurrent I/O from the late 1960s. FANG was one of the first applications to use that concurrency effectively. You could put in a series of commands to operate on multiple files, and it would do them as concurrently as possible, keeping track of any dependencies in the file copies.
Not quite a cheat, but I'd say that the original instructions used to calculate log tables might be close.
It's code (well, instructions - same thing?)
While it has been retyped many time, I'm sure the original paper-based instructions are still in a library somwwhere, and would work on a suitably old calcuator (hand-cranked, of course)
It's definitely a complete algorithm
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
The same people who were rigorously responsible for y2k problems? I'm calling bullshit on that one.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Actually there is a simple explanation for this. Computers have become comoditized more and more. But the first computers and programs where created for the most important things in the world that needed them. And because they run such important things (Nuclear Power plants, Air Traffic Control Code, Banks, institutions, etc.), the managers and agencies that are in charge of them keep an attitude of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Or at least nobody wants to tackle that problem.
When that code was created, you probably had to be at the top of your game in order to create such software. But nowadays, any Tom, Dick or Jane can be a programmer, but those aren't necessarily the people that you'd want to have rewriting cuclear power plant control software. And having been a programmer professionally and a system administrator for a while, I think that the people who are capable, don't want to bother with it because there isn't much glory for it.
But what will happen when it all fails and nobody knows how to fix it or the fix is incorrect? (See, STTNG: When the Bough Breaks).
Ada Bryon's Notes on the analytical engine contains the oldest running code today. It can be run here.
Of course Charles Babbage holds the claim for longest vaporware project at 153 years. And also apparently the longest unfixed bug.
int main()
{
cout "Hello World!";
return 0;
}
Some people were still dinking around with IBM 1401 (late 1950s) code as recently as 2000. http://www.multicians.org/thvv/1401s.html, but not for any productive purpose. I wouldn't be at all surprised to find Fortran/Cobol programs originally written for the IBM709 or CDC1604 still in use. Not on the original hardware of course -- too expensive to run Maybe the right question is what is the oldest computer still in use somewhere in the world? Odds are pretty good that some of the code from its early years is still around.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
what about microcode? or the "code" that's hardwired in processors since they began?
such as "AND" circuits (logic "code") and "OR", "NAND", "ADD", "MULT", "SUB" (both with and without carry bits).
How about the "code" that fetches instructions and data?
Babbage's difference, engine. Granted, it never ran when Babbage was alive, but he designed it in 1822 or something and Nathan Myhrvold (sp?) had one built recently.
Yikes! I clicked on this page, and a banner ad for the product I work on every day! Hmm, I knew we had some legacy code in our code base, but this must be the Universe letting me know it's time to look for a new job.
What's the matter? 'Funny' doesn't yield any karma, anyways.
True, but what's really the definition of "still running" for purposes of it being the same code? If you patch one byte, is it the same code? Sort of a Ship of Theseus problem, no?
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
There are a whole bunch of 4-bit and 8-bit microcontrollers that have been designed into amateur and commercial radio equipment. Much of that equipment gets used for 30+ years.
IBM probably still has bits of code from the IBM 360 that are still running on modern mainframes.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Some mainframe BAL programs that make up a simple batch job scheduling/notification system I wrote way back in 1983 for the US MEPCOM Joint Computer Center (US Govt datacenter) are still being used 25 years later. Some of the same folks are still working there too, which is how I know.
I think the question of longest running line of code is a more interesting question in some ways. Otherwise, what do we consider an algorithm? The Babylonians knew the quadratic equation, I would nominate that as one of the longest "running" algorithms. What, after all, constitutes a computer, or mechanical computation in general?
Could it be some COBOL compiler?
Dont make a better sig, you insensitive clod!
its a light bulb in a firehouse somewhere thats been running the most basic program ever for 107 years, nonstop. if(true){ON}
Some of the first computers do still exists or were rebuilt, e.g. the Zuse Z3 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z3_(computer)) where a working replica is shown in the Deutsches Museum.
I guess some of their original programms are still used for demonstration purposes
Do you mean the oldest code that still exists in "modern" applications? If so, then some of the small snippets of code in Windows Vista surely dates back to Windows 1.0. (Mac OS X was enough of a break that I doubt there are any remaining bits of the Mac OS Toolbox in it anymore.)
Theo Gray has posited that some of the code in the latest Mathematica is likely the original algorithms he wrote in the '80s.
If you're talking about 'oldest code in any system', then others have given ideas like space probes, nuclear reactors, etc.
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
We programmed landleveling program on an Apple II+ in 1979. That code has remain pretty much unchanged since a port to GW basic for the PC. That is the oldest code we have written that is still being used. Before that we used a strip programmable HP-Calculator (computer?) to run the numbers.
Good and simple. >.>
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Search here
By which I mean production code, not the 'Hello World!' you did in Jr. High. I'll go first. In the mid 90's I wrote a COBOL program to link a mainframe to a HP printer to print transcripts at a uni. The SYSPROG set up the VTAM lines and I glued the PCL together with COBOL. I checked in about 3 years ago and a friend of mine said they were still running it. So at that time it was pushing 10 years. Which makes me proud actually.
Anyone else with a story?
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
CreateHeaven()
I know the Air force still runs POST..
POST was written during the 1960's to support the Apollo program.
POST is a Program for Orbital Simulation of Trajectories
Although may users run the version that was rewritten for the PC.
Didn't Jurassic Park use the world's oldest code to make dinosaurs back in the 90's?
You're an ass if you can't see the difference between rigor and requirements... Someone made a design decision about how to store years. Period.
The Pentagon runs some old COBOL code to track accounts and money. Logically. Article here.
If so, any addition or subtraction procedure running on an abacus.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
of course...
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
Megatest Q2/52 testers are still being used. As I recall, the host computer is a PDP-11. In some contexts there's no compelling reason to upgrade to more expensive equipment if the old equipment is getting the job done. The same company may use ancient equipment alongside latest-greatest, depending on requirements and cost tradeoffs for different products.
It's amazing to me that NASA has the foresight to design such a remote update system years before the concept of a "firmware update" was ever applied to consumer technology. The innovations that have come out of NASA's labs is vastly underappreciated -- one wonders where our technology would be today if we invested more in the space program and less in killing one another (that is _not_ a condemnation of any particular country, pointing fingers doesn't solve problems...if anyone is offended by that remark I apologize).
I would guess that the Casio digital watches must run on some old code, if you can even call it that. The very simple ones doesn't seem to have changed much in the last few decades at all.
Well we know it's in Windows. They never throw out code. There's bound to be some old punch card code in there. Vista has to get it's blinding speed from some where
The stargate DHD code is very old but it auto updates it self.
Probably aol dialup sign in code.
Bah. There's no problem there. If you want to know which ship is Theseus's, just go ask the Athenian Port Authority. :)
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
There are two operating Babbage Difference Engine No. 2's, one in the London Science Museum, and one on loan to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA. Not sure about today, but yesterday the one at the Computer History Museum was set up to produce actual log table results, and being hand cranked by a docent. The Computer History Museum also has an operating PDP-1 capable of running the original Spacewar! code.
http://www.computerhistory.org/babbage/
http://www.computerhistory.org/restorations/
That sounds like a severe case of nostalgia to me.
:-)
I don't think that these systems were made in a much more rigorous way than mission-critical systems are made today. Modern systems have so many more things they are expected to be able to perform, and are, in general, simply way more complex and way more layered.
Rather, the legacy systems were designed for very specific use cases and are, as a consequence, used in very specific ways. I mean, the banks I have worked with are probably among some of the most technologically backwards organizations I ever encountered.
Their systems are also usually used in a totally isolated environment, and this have been done in exactly the same way forever. So security updates are an issue either.
Since these system also haven't been developed further for a very long time, there has been no addition of code with potential bugs in it.
BUT, and this I would like to emphasize a bit, "legacy" systems typically aren't bug free at all.
Typically people have to employ numerous workarounds to deal with them. Many of these workarounds has then, over time, become the "truth".
Just one small example of a typical legacy system bug:
One summer, a long time ago, I was working at a company using a huge mainframe running a really old system.
I had a huge bug; If one of the warehouse workers, in any of their warehouses(distributed all over the country) entered an invalid article number, that session got into a endless loop and consumed almost all of the systems resources. We are talking hundreds of people over a wide area that could not carry out their work.
Now, it wasn't easy to even enter an invalid code, the system did *almost* not allow it.
However, codes read though a bar code reader could be invalid, and it that code could also be accidentally edited, circumventing any checks.
I have friends that have told me many a similar story over the years, so I am totally convinced that I am not the only one and this is not the only huge, critical AND buggy legacy system out there.
To the best of my knowledge and experience, most systems used for banking are positively riddled with old bugs and oversights.
Then, most systems are, of course
Baboons are cute.
Stuff for Republicans.
Unfortunately, McCain returned to the U.S.
I thought he got the artificial heart after he was shot through the heart by Aaron Burr (who was, as Vice Presidents go, a much better marksman than Dick Cheney).
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
If by "program" you mean a stored program on what is conventionally meant by a computer today, I have a candidate. IEFBR14 was used on the earliest version of OS/360 in 1964 as a do-nothing program. It is still in use today, unchanged on the latest version of z/OS. Its function is to execute a JCL step which does nothing, but in the process of doing nothing, the job scheduler is invoked. This is one method of creating and deleting datasets (files). It is also the shortest valid OS/360 (and z/OS) program, containing two executable assembler statements and two assembler directives. The comments are mine.
IEFBR14 CSECT START PROGRAM SECTION
SR 15,15 SET EXIT CODE TO 0
BR 14 RETURN AND EXIT
END TELL ASSEMBLER END OF PROGRAM
Interestingly, the first version of this program had a bug, which was subsequently corrected by doubling the program length. It omitted the SR 15,15 statement, which meant that at program exit register 15 had an unpredictable value -- and the program exit code was therefore unpredictable. Since a zero exit code is used to guide the conditional execution of subsequent steps, a failure could be indicated when there was none.
And contrary to another post, I believe there are a lot of people with computer experience predating 1970 who read Slashdot. But I don't want to start a flame war over that.
Of course, it depends on what you count as code and what you count as running.
People have already mentioned DNA, and I guess I'd give that high marks. But maybe we mean things invented by man.
An abacus is a hardware program that is programmable with data and will yield numeric results. So is a sliderule. And there are others like the card sorters for punch cards, which predate programmable computers by several decades and yet performed very useful computation long before general purpose computers. And there are analog computers for predicting the motions of planets or for controlling the locks of the Panama Canal. But maybe we meant code implemented in software.
The Babbage Machine is mechanical so if it stops, does that mean the machine has crashed or does it just have a long cycle time? People have mentioned that, and that's certainly a worthwhile contender.
Mathematics also codes up algorithms, some of which are extremely old, and some of which you might regard as code, and so there might be something there that's competitive. But in a forum like this, full of nerds, I think "math" is too easy an answer and isn't provocative enough to get people thinking, so I'll go with this one:
My personal favorite is just something done in human language. Human language has codified the execution structure of organizations and processes for quite a long time. The US Constitution defines an engine that runs the United States, for example. Roberts Rules of Order is a program that is an interrupt-driven system that runs meetings. Contract law in the US (and perhaps world-wide) reminds me a lot of the structure of bootstrapping TCP (reliable transport of packets under a contract) from unreliable pieces (the contract terms and offers); the whole business of how you can send an offer and what constitutes acceptance in the face of data loss and things arriving in the wrong order is very much analogous to what you see in modern networking systems, but just used to work via pony express instead. So I'd put my vote on one of those. I just don't have the time to work out the timelines to figure out which one came first... probably something in English Common Law. It also depends on whether you want a "framework" or a "packaged application" or whatever, because some of these I've mentioned are in different categories in that regard. These may not be quite as old as some mathematical algorithms, but I bet they're more overlooked.
Now that I think of it, though, I bet food recipes (which are algorithmic in nature) predate even the earliest work of mathematicians, and it wouldn't surprise me if the recipe for making hot tea is the oldest, even if it's been upgraded a few times for changes in available hardware.
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
Just a few weeks ago, one of my guys was looking at an old system that we have running. It is an old IMS application running on an IBM mainframe used to manage some factory equipment. We want to replace that system (even though "it just works"), so my guy was looking into it to see how it worked, as documentation is, of course, non-existent.
The source code was written by my first CIO in the mid 1980s (who retired in the early 1990s), and it had a comment at the top which stated that it was created in January, 1968. It is quite sloppy... clearly before anyone thought about writing pretty code. There is no doubt in my mind that it was originally written on coding forms, and subsequently loaded into a machine via the long-defunct keypunch department. The program, of course, is running on much newer hardware now, but the code that is running was written in 1968.
I speculate that there is a bunch of older code outside of my company.
My daughter's grade school still uses several Apple //e and ][+ computers in their daily activities. I set them up with AppleWin so that when the floppies finally die and they can't find any more, they can still use those educational games.
written in basic on a compucorp in the late 70s or early 80s and still running in libraries in vb6 programs are some date functions. the code may have been lifted from a mini computer in the 60s but the oldest person in our company isn't sure as it was before his time. transfered to quickbasic 4, qbx 7 all the vb variations for windows. sure we could learn the inbuilt functions for whatever basic version we were using but we already had a working library that was tested so...
"Firmware" updates have been occasionally uploaded to the Pioneer and Voyager
They had to, because Voyager kept calling itself "Vger".
Table-ized A.I.
1. The US air traffic control system is 1960s vintage and I'd bet that there's still code in it that is unchanged since it was written.
2. Some airline reservation systems are of equally antique origins. Although I'm sure the hardware has been updated in the ensuing years, I'd say there's probably a lot of code that hasn't been rewritten. Back in the '80s when I was doing some work with an airline and asked about that, I was told, "That code is older than you are."
3. Don't know if this is still the case, but back in the late '70s, Navy carriers had computers so old that they were having to scrounge up germanium transistors to keep them operating. They wanted to keep them operating because nobody wanted to pay to rewrite the gazillion lines of reliable and tested assembly-language code that ran on them. If any of those are still around, they'd be my top candidate for having unchanged code still in operation. I'd guess that, in general, military systems (of the non-COTS [commercial off-the-shelf] type) are the most likely "oldest code" candidates, because of the lengthy and expensive qualification process and the long service life of such systems.
I don't know if they've rewritten it, but when I was there in 2002, the Windows Server 2003 Boot Sector and program loader said Copyright IBM, OS/2 1.0 and I think the date was 1987. It had a couple of updates along the way to boot off CD but was very ancient code.
Does anyone know if sputnik 1 ( or any of it's sibblings ) contained any computer code ? Or maybe if they ever patched any of it? Or even more omportant is sputnik still active ?
I don't know if the code in the application I work on is the OLDEST ... but some of it was last modified in 1993 and has never been recompiled since. Still runs perfectly. Started on a 48bit CISC system and now runs on a 64bit RISC system.
The application runs on a IBM i (formerly System i, formerly iSeries, formerly AS/400).
while he did mention that code has to be running (or better the same algorithm), we might also add the sieve of eratosthenes to this list ... it should be in use for over two millenia already ^^
(there are also some algorithms for calculating square roots and such with a similar age)
When I last had anything to do with them, (around Y2K) a lot of the old airline crs systems that grew out of the American Airlines/IBM SABER system were still based on 1950's mainframe assembler code.
It wouldn't surprise me if some of the core subroutines are still inchanged.
10 PRINT "Disco Sucks!"
20 GOTO 10
Table-ized A.I.
I don't, so please, with sugar on top, enlighten me.
What the difference between two completely different expressions?
Because I think rigor can be applied to requirements as well.
I must be an ass.
Baboons are cute.
The algorithm of tit for tat appears very early in law. For example, it appears most explicitly in early Hebrew law: From Exodus 21:23-21:25
The Code of Hammurabi uses tit for tat for the basis of punishment for an equal on an equal:
Harming those of different social status results in different degrees of punishment.
Harming one's father is dealt with severely.
The Code of Hammurabi was enacted sometime around 1750 BCE and is based on earlier law. Wikipedia seems to indicate the Book of Exodus was probably written in the 13th century BCE.I have an old 555 chip counter that I built back in the late 70's. It just sits there and counts over and over from zero to seven and displays that on a set of three LED's. Uses an old 6 volt lamp battery and is still running.
It doesn't really use software in the truest sense, but it is "programed".
Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
I thought he got the artificial heart after he was shot through the heart by Aaron Burr (who was, as Vice Presidents go, a much better marksman than Dick Cheney).
You Burr fans just won't let it go, will you? I'm so tired of the ProtoCon agenda.
I think Qmail is from 98.. That's impressiv, and it's still inn active use around on the net.
#!/bin/sh
exit 0
Has probably been in place for most unix flavors since the early seventies.
And it is *widely* used to this day.
Sorry forgot to include links.
Code of Hammurabi
Exodus 21:23-21:25
It's a porch light in a small rural town in North Caroli... wait.. oh, I'm sorry, I thought you said light bulb.
DNA.
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
The Harvard Mark 1, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_Mark_I, still runs periodically throughout the day in the Harvard science center, IIRC. It was delivered in 1944.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
using M-x time-jump is allowed.
and if not, then I'm sure there's a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacquard_loomJaquard Loom around somewhere.
/. needs better questions.
imho,
I was looking for some mathematical routines to port into Python and ended up poking around at http://www.netlib.org/ and http://www.nist.gov/ where there are huge repositories of mathematical functions, most written in Fortran.
One of the most interesting things after perusing much of the code I was looking for, was that instead of using integration routines for calculating things like Bessel functions, Hankel functions, and other differential equation related functions, they simply used look up tables and curve fitting.
I suppose in the 1960's that made perfect sense as computers were so slow. But even today, I don't know why I shouldn't do the same thing. With EM and circuit simulation software its GIGO. There are so many parasitics to model, that you can only ever get an approximation anyway, so what difference does it make if you get a tiny error from a look up table, vs. the "exact" integration routine value?
John, your famous temper is showing again... ;-)
We probably wouldn't be as far along. Military technology, especially in times of conflict, has resulted in a great deal of progress. Among other things, there's clearly defined failures (eg, someone defeats your army in battle or you have to abandon some location or policy). In comparison, what's failure in space development? It's obvious when things blow up. But what happens when things just aren't done? Is that a failure or just something that can't yet be accomplished? As I see it, it's far easier for a space program to plug along without any real measure of success and failure. That has complicated our efforts to do things in space.
Myth has it that in the days of Hollerith cards, a sort routine was important, even critical, to smooth operations.
Dropping a tray of program cards would ruin your month. Sorting them by step# saved your month.
I suspect these routines would be the oldest stuff still running. Most good sort methods were probably worked out pretty quiclly, given the scarce machine resources.
???
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
That was made in what, the late 1800s? You can't get much older than over 150 years...
I saved this post from alt.folklore.computers. Terribly impressive. I'm
not sure his age estimate is necessarily accurate -- the final
incarnation of the Leo ceased to be manufactured in the later half of the
60s.
I don't know if some modern incarnation of the Orange Leo made it past Y2k. If it did, my guess is it will still be around for a long time...
From: Deryk Barker
Subject: Re: Multics
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers, alt.os.multics
Date: 1998/11/09
[*snip*]
When my wife was working for Honeywell, in the 1980s, one of the
customers she had dealings with was British Telecom.
BT, at one location, had what they called the "orange Leos".
Now, for those who don't know this, the LEO was the world's first-ever
commercially-oriented machine (1951). Even more amazingly, the Lyons
Electronic Office was designed and built by the J Lyons company,
best-known as manufacturers of cakes and for their nationwide chain of
corner tea shops.
Anyway, an "orange Leo" was an ICL 2900 mainframe (they came in orange
cabinets), emulating an ICL 1900 mainframe, emulating a GEC System 4
mainframe emulating a LEO.
30+ year old executable code over 3 architecture changes....
My uncle used to run embroidery machines in union New Jersey. These were built in the late 1800 and were about 100 feet long 10 feet wide and 2 stories tall with 1000's of needles stitching constantly. Literally were built as part of the building they were housed in.
Where it gets interesting is these were driven by a large mechanical computer that ran from paper punch cards. The device itself was about a 1 meter cube. There were adders, and carry, multiples, and I think even branches and loops. It used to move paper cards back and forth as it created post man patches or frillies part of ladies undergarments.
Don't know if this counts though and I think it's decommissioned anyhow, but it was sure was cool to watch.
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso
I'm thinking maybe the air-traffic control systems? Aren't there frequent complaints that they are outdated? Or perhaps some kind of defense system, like NORAD, etc.
Pretend I said something meaningful or insightful here.
Sort of depends on definition of "still running". If you mean in use when necessary and essentially an unchanged algorithm and logic, we have a lot of FORTRAN code written in the early 60's still running in daily use. I predates Fortran IV, but I would suspect that the same code started in ALGOL and They are generally math function routines (convert Euler Angles to Quaternions, that sort of thing). Originally it was on cards but then implemented into files. I still have some of the card decks. I would guess that with some work I can find some older than that (that is character-wise identical except for the comment cards).
Brett
Euclids algorithm for finding the greatest common divisor of two numbers must have been one of the first algorithms still widely used in programming.
It's normally being taught as one of the first
examples of recursive programming, along
with an (inefficient) algorithm for finding
fibonnaci numbers.
Euclids algorithm dates back to the ancient greeks,
according to wikipedia.
Probably Euclid's algorithm, which finds the greatest common divisors of two integers a, b.
let c be the remainder on diving a by b.
if c = 0, b is the greatest common divisor.
else run the algorithm on b, c.
Euclid ~ 300 BC , the algorithm might be a little older.
These were built to run 30 years without convevfailure.
As both a mechanical engineer and software engineer, this doesn't amaze me at all. It's basic "CYA", applied by engineers. They were sitting around a table one day, going over failure modes or something like that, and someone said "Hey, what if we forgot something here? Can we prove that we've covered everything that could be foreseen?". They thought about that for a minute, and being practical engineers, they said "Nope; we can't prove squat, and we probably did miss something, so lets build in something to let us deal with that contingency." And that's how the remote update system got invented. It's an obvious solution to an obvious problem, once you accept that uncertainty is a constant that needs to be dealt with rather than hidden away.
I have some assembly that is still running (compiled and burned in 1993) on an 8085A. Used daily...
When I worked at the local cable company for a while, they were using a billing system run by CSG on some type of IBM mainframe. On the PC-end they were just switching over from raw 3270 access to some Windows formey-type thing (which under the hood was pulling up and filling in 3270 forms). But the backend... when I logged in, I think the copyright was like (c) IBM 1968,1972,1978 or so. I'm certain there's older software about, but here's one that's used (indirectly) by millions of people.
Windows XP SP2 :p
Oh wait.......Vista....
Damn I always get this one wrong....
Sorry, I think I read the question wrong, was that old code that was over engineered and created for people who have never used or appreciate what a computer is and can do. What would happen if people were just allowed to drive cars without being trained or sitting a test....yeap....bot nets.
Of course, one of the main reasons that NASA exists in the first place is to show our military might. If we could send people to the moon it is obvious that we have accurate missiles that can make it across the world and still hit their target. NASA was the "peaceful" way of showing our military power and technological innovations, and it served its purpose quite well.
The problem today is that without a cold war, NASA doesn't have as much of a purpose. It's still around, and still doing neat things, but it isn't where innovation is being pushed as far.
Phil
Most likely not the oldest code running, but how about, perhaps, the oldest widely distributed code, and still being distributed, running code.
Squeak is not just "a" Smalltalk implementation, but it is also, in many ways, "the" Smalltalk implementation.
I may be completely wrong about this, but it makes a good story nonetheless, so I'll make my case.
Back in the late 70's, the group at Xerox PARC were working on what would become Smalltalk-80. An interesting artifact of the Smalltalk implementation is that rather than being developed as individual facets of source code that are then compiled in to a final distribution, like a C program for example, Smalltalk is distributed and developed by directly making changes in to a running image. At times, that image is replicated and copied to other users.
Smalltalk can certainly be, and is, distributed as solely source code. But even today I do not believe there is a Smalltalk system that can be built from the ground up purely from source code. They typically rely on an instance of an image of Smalltalk to start with.
At the minimum, this is how the PARC Smalltalk-80 is developed.
Since Smalltalk was written on top of a VM architecture, in order to port Smalltalk from one machine to another, you only have to port the VM itself, then an existing Smalltalk image would run on top of that VM. So, the easiest way to port Smalltalk was to start with an existing Smalltalk image, and a VM spec.
In essence, the VM spec is exactly what the famous "Blue Book" was. It was the documentation of the Smalltalk VM.
While PARC released Smalltalk-80 on to the world in 1980, via the August issue of Byte Magazine, they also managed to work with four different companies who were also interested in the Smalltalk technology. One of those companies, as many may well know, was Apple Computer.
In order to facilitate the bootstrapping effort, all of the companies were given an existing Smalltalk-80 image which they would use on their own internally developed Smalltalk VM. At this point, this Smalltalk image could well be considered to be a copy of the original Smalltalk image that PARC itself was using for internal development. Xerox's master, base Smalltalk image.
I personally saw this image running in 1985, when an Apple employee demonstrated it to me at a Mac show being held on our university campus. It was a very enlightening experience. And for anyone who has read the "Orange Book", this image showed the exact same system as documented in that book, with it's browsers, workspaces, inspectors, scrollbars and pop up menus.
Fast forward to the mid-90's, when Squeak was announced to the world.
Squeak is a portable Smalltalk runtime and image, written within itself. It is self hosting and a "full blown" Smalltalk environment. The Smalltalk used to create the VM is a specific subset of Smalltalk that can be compiled down to C, linked with some system primitive functions, and compiled to be hosted on any of several systems. Once the VM is ported, the image "just starts". Squeak is widely ported.
Squeak is a direct descendant of the Apple Smalltalk effort from the early 80's. In fact, it's being build by the same folks who worked on the original Smalltalk at PARC. The early goal of the project was simply to get a portable VM to run the standard Smalltalk image. And by standard Smalltalk image, I mean Apple's Smalltalk image, which is a direct copy of the the image used by Xerox in Smalltalks infancy.
What I assert, though I cannot prove, is that there is code, and perhaps even large chunks of code, within the modern Squeak image, that was placed there by the original authors pushing 30 years ago. I argue that the code is still there, and that it could be code that worked so well, there has not been any call to change it in all these years.
Now, it's fair to assume that the actualy byte codes may not be the same (I imagine they're not, minimally at an object pointer level), but whatever byte codes we have
"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something" - Plato
The company I work for celebrated its 40th anniversary and I am fairly sure that we still have some BAL modules (mainframe assembler) running from when the company started, around so 1967/1968.
I go for the Maxwell equations: God said:
Divergence of E = charge density / permittivity of free space ;
For that matter, how often does it need to run in order to be "still running"?
If you run the oldest piece of hardware with the earliest software ever written once or twice per decade for historical reasons, is that code "still running"?
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Would the placement of gears, within a clock, count as code?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sieve_of_Eratosthenes. It was concieved by Eratosthenes of Cyrene sometime between 276 BCE and 194 BCE. That one's certainly still used somewhere on the planet.
Oh and here is another one, the "Euclidean algorithm" to calculate the GCD (Greatest Common Divisor). Wikipedia states it's as the oldest algorithm known
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euclidean_algorithm
most certainly also still used today.The Egyptians apparently had an algorithm to muliply numbers:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_multiplication
which is of course much older than the first two but no longer in use today (I guess) so I doesn't count.Wars do a couple of really 'great' things for research though:
1) The government is willing to spend all of our money on it at the cost of buying TVs, Cars, big houses and the like.
2) People are willing to take extreme risks because unsafe technology still might be safer than inferior technology. So you can convince the government to just have a test pilot get in a plane and try to fly it instead of spending 5 years on feasibility studies. If you lose 100 test pilots it's just par for the course and an acceptable loss. "Acceptable sacrifice" during peace time sometimes approaches 0 in the case of NASA.
3) Extreme time constraints: Everything gets tested quickly because building a better airfoil literally is a matter of life and death.
4) Necessitating application. Having worked with an advanced aernautical research group I can tell you that the one I worked with (which is the R&D division of a houshold name aeronatics company) wasted probably 80% of the resources I saw simply because they had no direction or concept of application. I will always remember the lesson that my Calculus teacher taught our class and it was "What do you want?" If you can't answer that question you aren't going to get much of anything. Engineers are great at solving a problem. If left to their own devices they're not very good at *finding* problems so they just tinker aimlessly (I know broad stereotype I'm sorry). As much as Engineers hate management (Dilbert Syndrome) a visionairy leadership in charge of adept problem solvers is going to be infinitely more productive than just a team of problem solvers led by problem solvers. In war the problem identifiers (pilots, soldiers, generals etc...) are put to work hand in hand with the problem solvers. "We need a device which can accurately deliver a payload of explosives onto another continent. Make it happen."
"What is the oldest piece of code that is still in use today, that has not actually been retyped or reimplemented in some way". Sounds pretty simple, even if one byte of the code changes, that is changing the implementation. Unless the code was designed to self modify of course! :P
which is totally what she said
The people who wrote the requirements are not necessarily the same ones who wrote the programs to meet them. If you tell an architect to build a 50-story building and then complain that it's not 100 stories, it's your fault.
.sig withheld by request
The one that springs to my mind is the SABRE airline reservation system. It went online in like 1960. It still powers most airline reservations for big domestic US Airlines.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabre_(computer_system)
Interestingly the original developers on SABRE were paid wages far higher than similar devs make today.
I used to work for a state Social Services department, and their main computer system was unveiled in 1977 for a Sperry mainframe. Today it runs on a Unisys mainframe.
Significant portions of the code haven't been altered since the early 80's.
Believe it or not, the Jaquard Loom - 1801 (which is still in operation today), is the oldest known powered, programmable 'computer'. It's output is not text or numeration, but textile. :)
If there is a hole (or binary 1), it allows thread to go through. So it is digital and not an analog computer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacquard
It is debatable if it is a computer, but the original post wanted to know about code running today.
Well the code is there as punch cards. Each set of cards can make a particular pattern in textiles. Copies of the code still run today.
Also, Babbage wanted to use a similar punch card system to program his engines.
Now if we are talking analog computing 'code' then that is a different story.
It's all there folks!
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
Gary Kildall's (or Intel, depending on who you listen to) PL/M compiler written in FORTRAN in 1975 still works with the GNU FORTRAN Compiler, and I still use it on a Linux box if I want a break from typing 8080 or Z80 assembler.
What?
Sheesh get a grip
It all started with a script
make earth
make heavens
Then there was some coding
b = light;
day = b;
night = !b;
To be honest the next bit about separating water from water was a little bit tricky and required some decent list processing (LISP, no matter what xkcd says). From then on it was just dedicated make scripts for the animals and the stars and stuff.
make is indeed all powerful
God
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Every morning on my way to work I pass where cavity magentrons were made into practical devices http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavity_magnetron and where the critical mass of Uranium was first deduced http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisch-Peierls_memorandum. The science didn't need huge budgets: the engineering that followed on from it did. A hour's drive takes me to Bletchley Park (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bletchley_park); again, the maths didn't need budgets, the engineering that followed did. Radar, atomic weapons and crypto: the spin offs drive a lot of the world today, but the raw science wouldn't have had as much influence without the money that science gives you.
ian
If you really want to get technical, only four functions in particular continue to remain in use going all the way back to the earliest of "computers" ever made. These functions are "add", "add", "store" and "move". All other "code" is simply a complex layering of these four basic functions on which all processors are based upon.
8==8 Bones 8==8
Maybe it has already been mentioned but How about peripherial control code, like keyboards?
Is that the best humor you got? Surely there must be something better than just this.
Max M - IT's Mad Science
Some of the F.A.A air traffic controls systems are 30-40 years old, written in Jovial.
I'm sure it's not *the* oldest, but it's old, and used all the time for something relatively important.
Maybe not
I will assure that there were "firmware updates" long before NASA started using them.
Why not BLKSIZE=8000 or something greater? Or have mainframes changed enough in the past 20 years that BLKSIZE being some small number isn't the hit that it used to be?
I, too, recognized that utility name and grok the BAL with which it is associated. That was two platforms ago for me, but wow, I loved both 370 assembler and the fun I could have with JCL - a fact that was sorely lamented by the college computer center folks who were forever worrying about what I might do next.
Will be some bytecode with some timeless artistry in it - probably a classic game. Zork comes to mind. The interpreter will be ported as long as there is humankind...
Me too!
Is this it?
10 PRINT 'HELLO WORLD'
20 GOTO 10
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
I have run a version of ircII compiled in 1993 succefully on ubuntu 6.10. I was attempting to make an automated IRC donwload bot to grab anime when it was released but failed. Seems no one else has manged to code one aswell.
What were the scientific advances brought about specifically by the Korean, Viêt-Nàm or Irak wars???
The Colossus machines were electronic computing devices used by British codebreakers to read encrypted German messages during World War II. These were the world's first programmable (if not fully), digital, electronic, computing devices. They used vacuum tubes (thermionic valves) to perform the calculations. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_computer And it still runs (at a museum)
"Unfortunately too many programmers still think that way and are not willing to put in the code for security checks, clean user interfaces, etc. that are required" - by WGR (32993) on Sunday May 11, @04:03PM (#23371054) I hear/feel you, speaking as a professional coder for nearly 16 years now... & I AGREE!
(With reservations: Because of deadlines (insane ones sometimes promised) & such, we're TOLD to issue with "intermittent bugs" a bit more time could trace out @ times, & YOU KNOW IT MAN!)
HOWEVER - Not ALL programmer's are like that, today, on ALL projects... going to show 1 that's definitely not, & outline why... I wager you'd agree, based on its architecture!
I.E.-> What I quote from you is untrue, of this piece of work:
----
APK Doctor Who ScreenSaver 2008++:
http://www.drwhodaily.com/community/index.php?s=4c91394a4eeba63a7acde25e70dbbe64&showtopic=386&st=0
----
"110% bulletproof & bugfree", only the best "SUPERIOR DALEK ENGINEERING" (nerdy humor/sci fi humor, but is true) in honor of that most excellent Sci-Fi series -> Dr. Who!
(It is version 1.0, but a good solid one, built on a template I built back in 1999 & perfected nearly a decade ago in a FAST language mix, for this type of program!)
FOR SECURITY IN DESIGN?
Uses only SOLID proven & FAST objects, (w/ mostly privatized declarations of internal structures members)
+
It's fully err-trapped via try-catch/except internally in ALL functions (override is to close if it screws up, which is PERFECT for this type of program, exit -> silently)
&
Even self-checking vs. virus infestation, tampering, &/or corruption via CRC-32 self-checks & filesize API call checks on itself)!
----
Don't despair, going to hit the SPEED/EFFICIENCY PART NEXT, lol!
----
FOR SPEED/EFFICIENCY??
It is a SINGLE MONOLITHIC EXECUTABLE/1 MOVING PART DESIGN
It was created in these languages & tools:
HIGHLY OPTIMIZED Borland Delphi 7.x object pascal code (optimized by compiler & by hand using hi-res multimedia timers + custom compiler switches)
Inline Assembler(doesn't get better than this)
Win32 API proven lib/dll calls
Delphi was proven faster than VB, or MSVC++ even, especially in math & strings (which EVERY program does, mind you) in the October 1997 issue of "Visual Basic Programmer's Journal" where Delphi took away 8/10 tests iirc, from both VB & MSVC++, overall.
It's also of multithreaded design (2/3 threads)... perfect for the SMP processors of yesterday, HT/Dual-or-more Core CPU's of now,and tomorrow!
Lastly?
It even "self-contains" the animation it plays back as an internal resource & plays it from RAM, not disk, for the UTMOST in performance too.
(For the utmost in 1 moving part only multithreaded F A S T Efficiency)
APK
P.S.=> As far as "speed/efficiency"? It even runs well on XP running on a Celeron 400mhz w/ only 64mb of PC-100 SDRAM, no less... apk
the x86 architecture, it comes from the 8086 which was manufactured from 1972. Although moden proccesors are not nativly x86 at some point there is one of the 8086's opcodes been decoded.
true patriotism. yes. as opposed to that fake stuff people throw around.
good luck with your aneurysm.
I have a suggestion of the answer. I suppose someone could get a confirmation lose but it would be from some pretty cagey folks who have made obscene amounts of money. Lexis/Nexis, in an effort to deal with the complete lack of optimized solutions for dealing with massive search and inddexing problems... They took several IBM mainframes beginning with the old 370 architecture days and put them together in what today would be a cluster. At the time it was all big iron, and there was no O/S per se, it was all customized IBM assembler. Today the core iron is still all IBM, but the outer edges are all client/server worstations and servers. It is apparently configured in a massively parallel configuration around the IBM mainframe core. I would propose that the core IBM mainframe code has changed only incrementally over time, and hence is probably the some of the oldest code in the industry still running. I guess logic would prevent one from assuming that no changes have been made as the hardware has been upgraded, but that core code has got to be ancient. mdw ;-)
"Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous." "I hear and I forget. I see and I rem
[*] CentOS and Fedora desktops also evoke "you run Windows!" I used to correct them. But now I don't bother. Among the forces working against MS is trademark dilution. Customers may insist on "Windows", but they actually mean the UI paradigm pioneered at Xerox, not necessarily the MS brand. Of course, they quickly attach to the brand as soon as they need to run a 3rd party application. MS needs those 3rd party developers.
The oldest code still running is the code that transfers several million dollars a month to secret bank accounts set up by the USA and USSR at the end of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. This code was initiated when it was discovered that renegade forces in the Soviet armed forces launched hydrogen bombs into space with instructions to stay harmlessly in space as long as money was transferred to certain numbered accounts.
After a long investigation, the Soviets executed the persons in their armed forces responsible but not before the Soviet scientists were able to lock codes into place that prevented the system from being disabled without triggering. The source code was destroyed and the computers programmed to rain the bombs down on the US if the large space vessels didn't regularly receive coded instructions to stay in space, or if the program stopped running. It was right out of 'Dr.Stranglove', and an example of the paranoid doomsday thinking that prevailed among the superpowers at the time. This incident was one of the most important events that led to coup in the USSR that drove Khrushchev (and his Stalinist apparatchiks) from power and led to the installation of the pro-Detent Breshnev/Khosgin regime in 1964.
Both the USA and USSR decided to keep the incident secret and it was determined that a continued stream of payments would be the cheapest, simplest, and easiest way to deal with a messy situation. A secret NASA space shuttle mission in 1994 attempted to adjust the orbits of the bomb-holding vehicles, but it is still unclear how successful this mission was.
This is an example of the legacy of insane situations and institutions that are left over from the cold war of the 20th century for us and future generations to have to deal with. Nevertheless, I believe that it is the oldest piece of code that has been running since its installation nearly fifty years ago.
Polish Railroads stil use the Odra 1305(produced in 1973) computer to controll the trafic on one of the stations - Wroclaw Brochow.
http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odra_1305#Ostatni_komputer_Odra
http://wapedia.mobi/en/Odra_(computer)
There's a lot of Fortran code, especially numerical libraries, that goes back a long way, to the 50s and 60s.
... tend to have a long shelf life. (Probably in other sciences too, but physics has the oldest codes since it embraced numerical computing earlier.)
Once a good piece of code has been written and thoroughly tested, it gets left alone unless there is a very good reason to change it. Which is also why Fortran is still going strong in physics and engineering, since there is so much legacy code out there.
I regularly use a code which has some procedures from the mid 1970s, according to the comments in the code, alongside stuff from the 1990s and 2000s in the same program.
Has to be the oldest code. Still used in machines today.
...But I digress. TREMBLE PUNY HUMANS!ONE DAY MY SPECIES WILL DESTROY YOU ALL!
Why does the number "42" suddenly pop into my head?
I'm quite offended by your apology; why even make a comment like that if you don't believe in it enough to stand your ground?
The oldest extant computer architectures are IBM System/360 (now called System z, but able to run object code from the 360) and Burroughs B5000 descendants (now called Libra). Both architectures date from the early 1960s (1964 for the System/360 and 1961 for the B5000), so we can guess that the oldest running programs date from the same period, or about 40 years ago.
This also fits well with one of the unwritten requirements of the questions: that there be a language in which to write the lines of code. The earliest computer languages (LISP, COBOL and Fortran) date from only a few years prior to the introductions of these systems (LISP was invented in 1958, COBOL in 1959 and Fortran in 1957).
This also fits well with a couple of long lived software systems with which I am familiar: The IRS tax return processing system dates from 1964, written in a combination of COBOL and System/360 machine code, it only now being replaced by C++ code (the project is called CADE and has been featured in a number of newspaper articles over the past 10 years as a monumental failure). The airline reservation system, SABER, dates from around 1960 and has been in constant use since it went live in 1964. While SABER was originally written for IBM 7090 mainframes, it was transitioned to System/360 in the early 70s.
Embedded systems aren't a consideration at this time scale (the first microprocessor didn't appear until 1971), so we don't need to worry that some washing machine from the 1950s is still running some program written at that time. Still, it sounds like the oldest running programs must be about 50 years old.
just a ghost in the machine.
Actually - it wasn't always this way, although this technology was deployed fairly early in the space program.
I remember reading an article about one of the earliest Mars probes. Both the US and the USSR launched probes around the same time. However, when the probes began to approach Mars a huge dust storm ensued obscuring most of the surface for quite a while. The US probe was reprogrammable, while the Russian probe was not. The US was able to put their probe into hiberation during the storm, while the Russian probe expended its energy relaying photos of haze.
So, the value of this ability was proven fairly early in the space program. I'm not sure what the timing was relative to Pioneer but it almost certainly predated Voyager.
Isn't this code still running?
And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness. God called the light "day," and the darkness he called "night." And there was evening, and there was morningâ"the first day.
I would have to verify exactly how old some of it is, but we have timestamped modules from the early 1980's still running today. Yes, the OS is upgraded every few years, now at zOS and about to be DB2 V8, and yes the tools have been upgraded - now at COBOL 3.4 and the rest periodically updated :)
Some of the programs they wrote when the Australian government had a wild and crazy idea of a system to pay Australians and medical providers for services based on a tax on income are still in the background running away happily. For that matter, a lot of the non-program items (VSAM files, JCL, etc) they created when the systems were brought only are still there... and most likely will still be there under Medicare closed its doors.
Decades ago I used an OS built from a bunch of text files. I think it was called 'UNIX'. Some bits of it are really old, unchanged and still in use.
ProtoCons? Oh, what a bunch of pikers!
The whole ProtoCon movement was really a distractor to draw attention away from the PaleoCon agenda.
Those PaleoCons won't rest until they've restored the monarchy.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
College-Pages.com - Online Colleges, Degrees, and Programs
I believe that would be the program running on Deep Thought.
http://www.mda.mil/mdalink/html/aboutus.html
;)
MDA Mission
To develop and field an integrated, layered, ballistic missile defense system to defend the United States, its deployed forces, allies, and friends against all ranges of enemy ballistic missiles in all phases of flight.
1. Retain, recruit, and develop a high-performing and accountable workforce.
2. Deliver near-term additional defensive capability in a structured Block approach to close gaps and improve the BMDS.
3. Establish partnerships with the Services to enable their operations and support of the BMDS components for the Combatant Commanders.
4. Substantially improve and demonstrate the military utility of the BMDS through increased system integration and testing.
5. Execute a robust BMDS technology and development program to address the challenges of the evolving threat through the use of key knowledge points.
6. Expand international cooperation through a comprehensive strategy to support our mutual security interests in missile defense.
7. Maximize mission assurance and cost effectiveness of MDA's management and operations through continuous process improvement.
Because, when an organization is going to burn through more cash than you or I will see in several lifetimes, you can bet your bippy they'll have some fancy words out front.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
The first "solid state" machines (CPU-based) were releases in 1976/1977 and are certainly still running (Bally Eight Ball anyone?), but I would argue that electro-mechanical (EM) pinball machines (using relays and "score motors", etc.) going back to the 1940's are running code, even though it is hard-wired. In fact, during the change over to solid state, manufacturers built both CPU and EM versions of some machines.
I work for IBM, and a few months ago one of our customers (a large, very old, bank and credit card company) reported a bug after migrating to the latest version of our Mainframe OS (z/OS).
I was the lucky one to get assigned that bug...
Many posts above have already mentioned IEFBR14 as one of the oldest programs around. And it does indeed get used all the time... but much of the rest of the operating system fits into the same boat in terms of age. If you thought BSD's 25 year old bug was impressive, imagine code that has been around for 40 years from OS/360. (Back then, it was just called "OS".) Most bugs in old code are because new code is doing things that were never expected or imagined... (think what fun it must be to run 24bit code in a 64bit OS.)
Anyway, back to this customer. Their bug was that one of their programs refused to load and run on the new release. They weren't able to recompile the application because they didn't have the source, and the systems operator didn't know who wrote it originally.
We had them send in the program for us to review in-house. The program contained a informational segment informing us that it was last assembled in 1974 by IBM's BAL assembler.
This poor system operator had been given the task of converting all of the old applications to the new mainframe release. Not surprisingly, the vast majority completed without problem. This one program (almost 35 y/o) turned out to be the only headache.
When we told the customer of the last assembled date, and the fact that these exact bits were probably once stored on PAPER tape, they decided to close out the problem record instead of having us track down and fix the bug.
There was a comment from the customer to the effect of "We're going to need to rewrite it anyway, the original developer is probably dead."
Funny thing is, IBM would have fixed the OS for them... z/OS will run programs from OS/360 unmodified, it's a guarantee. I guess not having the source or any real assurance about what the program does will be the death of a lot of code.
LESSON: If you want your code to outlive you, be sure it comes with lots of very explicit documentation, and the source to update.
Please, someone mod this guy '+1 uncomprehended genius' :)
Last I checked there were Dave Cutler comments in the realtime kernel of Quantum (hence probably Maxtor too) SCSI disk and tape drives. The original DSSI (later SCSI) code was a port of the HSC (T)MSCP code. AFAIK the HSC was basically a PDP-11.
Sadly, killing one another has yielded some practical breakthroughs as well. One mustn't belittle the progress being made for the purpose of slaughtering one another, or avoiding being slaughtered. I'd have to say that probably the greatest motivation for scientific research would be the avoidance of being wiped out.
I just read an article about the progress that's being made treating soldiers with Polytrauma. You don't really have much of a testbed for that kind of research without a war.
Why would you replace something that just works? Are you crazy? *Thousands* of bugs may have been encountered and fixed in that old code.
I work for a tekphone software co. that was part of old Ma-Bell. I can tell you that this country's telephone co. Still run software originally developed right after punch card machines were removed from production. They are cobalt software systems running on IBM mainframes and do everthing from provisioing POTS phone service to inventory of outside lines to central office switch activation.
I can't name the specific program , but I can say for sure that the oldest piece of code is being used by a U.S. Government agency.
I'm betting that every program old enough to have 'lived' through the turn of the century has had significant modifications and recompilations, such that they are not the same program they were 10 years ago.
Well, the "auto-templates" do look a lot like that. But most of the modules use manually written templates with CSS stylesheets designed with DreamWeaver. The green screen data fields are mapped to HTML INPUT fields.
Back in the 1980s I worked as a contract programmer/analyst, modifying COBOL programs to operate in a new accounting package environment.
I had trouble understanding the COBOL because all the variables were A CHAR(02) B DEC(9,2) and so forth.
There was a lot of GO TO A DEPENDING UPON B; statements in there too. The programs were all just 249 or so lines long. I asked where they came from, and learned that they were originally written in 1402 AUTOCODER, back before the IBM S360 was invented.
When they converted to COBOL, the converter just used letters for the variables, and the branches were all turned into "go to depending on" at the end of a peice of code. Very primitive, and probably still running.
They had VM running and I learned REXX while waiting between tasks, before they realized I understood things, and made me into and analyst project leader... They wasted a lot of money getting that crufty code to run in a spiffy new environment!
That's some really old code. My buddy at work has a piece of memory, about 2 inches cubed, 4 bits. No kidding.
Old stuff. You guys can't imagine. Now I manage AJAX development.... kool.
JR
10 PRINT "HELLO, WORLD!"
"The answer is..."
"Yes.."
"Is..."
"Yes...!!!..."
""Forty two."
"I speak of none but the computer that is to come after me. A computer hows merest operational parameters I am not worthy to calculate - and yet, I will design it for you. A computer of such infinite and subtle complexity that organic life itself shall form part of its operational matrix. And I shall name it also unto you. And it shall be called... the Earth."
"What a dull name."
The oldest code known to
****** NO CARRIER ******
"Be grateful for what you have. You may never know when you may lose it."
wash.
rinse.
repeat.
Oh that's easy. The US Navy's MEASURE calibration system is older than Dirt.
In fact, most of the technology we take for granted today was born out of war. Even the internet.
1. An Atari 2600 - 1977, so 30 years old..still kicking and still fun. Much the same can be said for other videgames of the era..intellivision, handheld Coleco Football...if they're still working the code is still running.
2. At my shop I've seen COBOL code which was last compiled in 1976..still running..source code is gone..more or less the same story as the DOD (old code) posts above
3. Someone else did mention Branch14 (iefbr14)..has been around forever.
4. Os 390 itself? It and it's utilities(besides branch14) must have some very old code.
5. Not quite as old as os/390 but modern UNIX (solaris, BSD, whatever) probably has some of the original code written by Kernighan and Thompson.
So from my 20 years in the IT business, that's my knowledge of old code...
Huh?
If you are going to limit 'code' to something that runs on a stored program computer. I own an HP35 calculator built in 19687 who's firmware has never been updated and gets taken out and run once in a while. I have been told that the firmware was developed in 1966.
So not only is this pretty old code, but it is still running on the original hardware.
This code is billions of years old, and still running.
In modern systems, the win16 code still running in Vista. Sure there's a few nice wrappers around it so that it looks like C# with .nyet. But truely, microsoft has resold this software for more than 20 years. Some people may have already paid more than $20,000 for the same piece of code already. For what I use, the oldest software I have is a borland pascal compiler from about 1986 or 1987. Its about 48K of software (including the wordstar editor). I run it on a really really (way past legacy) computer I got from my sister in law. Where she worked, they had really old computers that were retired, but she needed something to type notes, so she got this old old laptop (for typing meeting notes). When she left, (maternity leave) they said she could take it with her. It sat unused through 2 boys and 1 more year. Then it was passed on to me. The only thing it will run is FreeDos and this borland compiler (and little else). Will it run XP?...she asked. No, I said. It has a '386 processor and 32 megabytes of memory, runs at 40 MegaHertz, and displays 16 colors. XP may need a squeak more computer than that. "It has a mouse", she added. And I said "its more like a trackball and its very nice, but XP still needs more." I occasionally pull it out and turn it on. There is no task switching, no memory management, no big drives, no optical anything, no networking, no window manager (or windows).
The roots of NASTRAN go back to 1962, with the earliest versions of the code as writing by Robert MacNeill (of the company MacNeill Schwendler, now MSC, of which he is no longer a part). It was released as NASTRAN (NASA STRuctural ANalysis) in 1968 as public domain code, but the most commercially successful version is MSC.Nastran. It's nearly 1M lines of mostly Fortran 66 and a few thousand lines of C. NASTRAN has such clout that most compiler vendors need to continue supporting antiquated constructs in Fortran just so the code can compile. It's I/O model is based on tape drive access. They owe their success in great part to buying up their rivals, following the model of Microsoft.
NASTRAN has been the industrial standard for structural analysis for 40 years, but its days may be numbered unless it can adapt to newer computational models.
As mentioned in another post, I've got some FORTRAN source from the 1960's that still compiles. As the person I was replying to stated, there's probably some FORTRAN code from the late 1950's still floating around.
A Shadeless room is a brighter room.
I have the shortest piece of code that is running on a number of computers I have cleaned up. I usually go through computer's startups and add c:\norun.bat to the beginning lines of anything that I dont think is useful at startup in autoexec, the registry run keys and a number of other odd places. I then just write a zero byte file named norun.bat in the root directory. It gets called with the offending program as arguments. It has no instructions and does absolutely nothing. It is essentially /dev/null executable for dos/windows machines.
Consider yourself blessed if you are sneezed on by a dragon and only get wet, it could have been a fireball.
Multi User real time spreadsheet released in 1985 to OEMs in the process control industry as a neworked data analysis and reporting tool. Original 1985 copies are still in use to day in industrial plants and power stations all over the world. It was even selected for use in the Inflatable Space Hab section of the ISS before it was scraped.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
The South Australian Lands Title Office software may have the record at 38 years old for code that is run on a daily basis to process water and sewerage, land tax, the Emergency Services Levy and the Natural Resources Management Levy.
The age of that software system has been criticised in Parliament:
http://hansard.parliament.sa.gov.au/pages/loaddoc.aspx?i=19004
Also, many banks in Australia have computer systems that are decades old - Cobol, FORTRAN, etc. The systems are too critical and complex to easily replace.
the Bible. heh...it does have some bugs that haven't yet been addressed.
The HP 35 used code running on what would now be called a micro-controller, and the first ones were probably running late 1971 based on reading a review in the April 1972 issue of Pop Electronics. I would guess that the Air Traffic Control system uses code that is a decade older...
A Shadeless room is a brighter room.
If I had to guess, I would say the answer was a compiler. I worked on some pretty old software (control systems, power plants...), but we were constantly updating the code. On the other hand the compiler that was used to build this non-ANSI C code was never updated. A newer version would break our code. We coded around known compiler bugs and kept that compiler backed up in several locations because we knew we could never get another copy.
This is a tough one. On the one hand, freedom of religion is clearly protected under the first Amendment to the USA Constitution. On the other hand, this statement might be a violation of the Fifth Amendment which protects a person from self incrimination and saying something as senseless as "Jesus loves gays" with the intention of inciting a Fundamentalist Church might indicate the waiver of the Amendments which (a) guarantee a trial, and (b) protect you from cruel and unusual punishment.
Support the 30 Hour Work Week!!!
What is a bippy? Do I even have one?
I may agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to face the consequences of saying it.
it was brought live in the early 70's is still functioning today and despite what wikipedia or the likes will tell you about it being updated with a java /xml wordsketch. The truth is that is an entirely different program which queries the actual tirks system and then displays its interpration of the response. And due to the fact tha tirks is so old and not meant to support some of the things that have been put in it that interpratation is not always accurate.
#include
using namespace std;
void main()
{
cout << "Hello World!" << endl;
}
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Bippy
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
If we count the genetic code, why not quantum field theory? Nature's been running some revision of it consistently for about 13-something billion years. All those Feynman diagrams are just one big fancy quantum neural network in space-time(s).
i\hbar\dot{\psi}=\hat{H}\psi
For nerds, yes!
I can recite the script to Monty Python's Holy Grail - "Now, go away, or I shall taunt you a second time!"
Dark Reflection
Christian fundamentalist or Muslim fundamentalist? Body count would be higher in the latter me thinks.
if no one fought the war there wouldnt be a nasa
Some of these micros have no RAM - just registers. The need for frugal computing will continue forever.
Yes, it is true theat Moores Law also applies, to an extent, to these micros: you get faster and bigger devices for the same price. But Moore's Law works the other way too. A fixed capability device gets cheaper and cheaper. If a rice cooker manufacturer has a 50c controller in their rice cooker and can bring that cost down to 40c they'll do the software development needed to achieve this.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
The word "computer" referred to not a type of machine, but a profession before WWII. Computers was the job title of people who calculated function, navigation and astronomical tables before the age of digital electronics. So, if someone can find the oldest book with the exact algorithm or methodology to hand compute some type of table (maybe in a manuscript that someone, such as Kepler, wrote up for his observatory assistant), that would get my vote for the oldest written "computer" program.
In late 1998 my dad got called out to help upgrade a very old IBM Model 1401 mid-range computer, manufactured circa 1964, so the data could be migrated, via a series of hops, to a more modern IBM mid-range platform: an AS/400.
First, his team acquired an abused IBM Model 729 Tape Storage Unit, rebuilt it from the ground-up, and attached it to the 1401. They then read the software and data, still residing on punch cards, with a newly-renovated Model 1402 Punch Card Reader, and saved the data to 7-track reel-to-reel tape.
Then, the 7-track tape reels were mounted on a refurbished IBM 2400-series Tape Storage Unit (with the rare 7-track compatibility option), so the software and data could be copied to a hard disk that was mounted on a System/360.
From there, the software and data were transferred to a System/38, and then - finally - to a good used AS/400.
In order to perform the migration, his team had to cobble together spare equipment acquired from parts brokers around the country, and hope the equipment would last long enough to complete the migration.
It did. And after a little over 12 weeks, they had the data up-and-running on the AS/400, ready for Y2K "scrubbing" by developers.
I suspect very little of the business logic/application software itself actually made the transfer all the way from the 1401 to the AS/400 in operable form, but the fact that a manufacturer was still running on a Model 1401 after 34 years stands as a testament to the stability and durability of mainframes.
Most of our vaunted PC-style x86-based servers don't make it past four years, and fewer still get past eight...
The OS and assorted applications for the 1952 IBM 701 are still available from the Share foundation.
I assume that this is for the vacuum tube computer enthusiasts.
The IBM 701 OS was updated for the IBM 704 in 1954.
Some code from this OS was used in the IBM 7090 and S/370 and persist in IBM mainframes today.
However, FORTRAN and LISP were developed for the 704 in late 1953.
From the detailed description, "AMSAT-OSCAR 7 contains two basic experimental repeater packages, redundant command systems, two experimental telemetry systems, and a store-and-forward message storage unit. The spacecraft in solar powered, weighs 65 pounds, and has a three-year anticipated lifetime.... AO-7 became non-operational in mid 1981 due to battery failure . In 2002 one of the shorted batteries became an open and now the spacecraft is able to run off solar panels. For this reason it is not usuable in eclipse...." and elsewhere, "Redundant command decoders of a design similar to the unit proven highly successful in OSCAR 6 will be flown. The decoder has provisions for 35 separate functions...."
The telemetry system is operational; the command system is partially operational.
Looking at space, radio, science and computing from a 'down-under' amateur enthusiast perspective.
I don't know when it was written but it predates 1979 (the oldest reference I could find). It is as old a "JCL" is on IBM mainframes. Even today, it is the single most useful and used program on the mainframe and it does nearly nothing. It sets a return code of zero and returns. That's all. It is primarily used to allow the resource allocations routines in JES to execute.
Sorta like touch to create a file :)
Don't forget IEHIBALL - Joke at IBM
Sometimes the word EYEBALL was inserted into code so that it was easy to spot in a printed (core) dump.
"I'll agree to this... a computer is nothing more then a machine that performs programmed/specified repetative tasks really fast."
By that definition... the DNA molecule which replicates itself is the oldest peice of computer code running.
Yeah, I know. It's like the guys are rocket scientists or something.
And no matter how old the oldest piece of running code is, there is some PHB who wants to make it web 2.0
I would vote for the computers running the USAF underground missile silos have not changed since they were built in the 60s. The systems are hardwired so they withstand EMP, and not networked so no viruses. No reason to change a thing.
The days of the digital watch are numbered.
I wonder if some of the MUMPS based systems like DoD's CHCS (Composite Health Care System) are candidates. They are at least thirty years old.
Three Step Plan:
1. Take over the world.
2. Get a lot of cookies.
3. Eat the cookies.
I have heard of antiquated census mainframes still used in state census bureaus.
In 1982, I did a semester break job working for the railways in an African country. The switching was all done with circuits that used relays for the logic. The "UPS" was a roomfull of car batteries.
That switching system was made in the early 50's and is still running (on occasion) today. The greatest thing about it that you can actually fix individual relays, which is good a country with no real infrastructure where repairs need to be done by hand, and also because relays are not exactly easy to come by these days.
"missile defense" pretty clearly defines the objective with only two words. Perhaps the objective is unnecessary, or the system is unlikely to meet the objective, but I don't think you can say the objective isn't clear.
yeah, communicating effectively with people instead of flaming them is certainly cause to get "fed up".
When you try to express a concept that might piss people off, and you aren't trying to piss people off, saying so and expressing sensitivity to their beliefs isn't "PC", it's basic technique of a civilized person in conversation.
note the word "civilized" typically connotes that you are attempting to be a civil person. While being an opinionated asshole is easy and fun (believe me, I know!) it is not effective communication unless your goal is to intimidate your listeners.
I share your impatience with people with thin skins; I also share on a personal level your disdain for those people's "maturity". but the fact is, people are different, and some people have thin skins for legitimate reasons you have no knowledge of. recognizing that is simply showing your listener that you have a basic respect for them as a human being, and it typically goes a lot further to achieve final understanding that just beating them about the head with their own "hot buttons".
in short, showing a little respect, deserved or not, is what it means to be civilized, IMHO. I don't always follow this. But whining about PC stuff is old and tired. Yeah, some people suck and are stupid and wussy; and it's still cool to be cool to people, by and large.
well if you don't mean IN IT"S ORIGINAL COMPUTER then I would bet that some early parts of bios code has been ported without change into bios chip code that is still used. thus that part of the code might be the oldest code still running - especially on a widespread basis. If you mean still running in its original computer, I would bet it would be early vintage 1970's calculator code that still runs fine and hasn't been changed since you bought the thing. My 70's calculators still work fine. Of course if you include code that you can still run in virtual emulators then probably some early vac or univac or cobol or fortran stuff still runs somewhere not to mention some early assembly. I still run some early basic stuff that was written in the 70's. I wonder if the unmanned soft moon landers like the rover from Russia had some code that still runs when the sun hits the solar panels even if they don't power up enough to communicate. I'll bet they still boot up to some degree so are still running their bios. I would guess some old satellites and space probes still boot each time sunlight hits their panels to some degree even if they no longer have power to transmit. Maybe some weather sonds dropped in places like the artic or underwater still boot up even though no one talks to them?
Why I ran that back in 1968 and the dern thing still hasn't finished executing.
the NASA/JPL spacecraft was Marinner 9, the USSR spacecraft was Mars 2 and 3 in 1971 http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/past/mariner8-9.html
----- The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. -- Benjamin Franklin
IANAL, but the Supreme Court made it clear what the boundaries of free speech are in Brandenburg v. Ohio: speech is protected unless it articulates a direct incitement to violent action and is also likely to produce that action.
Shouting "Jesus loves gays" in a fundamentalist church is definitely a direct incitement to violence and is also highly likely to produce violence. So shouting that in a fundamentalist church is most likely not protected under the 1st Amendment.
"All you need is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure." -- Mark Twain
This isn't the oldest code ever, but it is the oldest code *I've* ever used. A few years ago, I was working with an atmosphere photochemistry model written in FORTRAN when I came across:
C ***** SPECIES DEFINITIONS *****
ISPEC(1) = 4HH2CO
ISPEC(2) = 1HO
ISPEC(3) = 3HH2O
ISPEC(4) = 2HOH
ISPEC(5) = 3HHO2
ISPEC(6) = 4HH2O2
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, those are Hollerith constants.
(Too lazy to read the Wiki link? A Hollerith constant is what you do in FORTRAN 66 and earlier when you want a string but your compiler doesn't have a character type: you shoehorn up to 8 bytes worth of ASCII into an integer and pray.)
It ran nice and fast on one node of my dual-core Athlon Beowulf cluster...
There have been some rather excellent answers given. The London example is probably the oldest, IMO. If you want to go to current day Operating systems that run "old" code. then in some cases it would IBM's z/OS . Believe it or not there is user written code that still runs in production environment that dates back to the early 70's. One thing that did happen was Y2K and quite a few programs got updated for that (just for Year 2000 code only). If you discard those out of the mess there still are *QUITE* a few programs that have not changed since 1970's (early). Nothing magical about the 1970's per se except that is when the first IBM real OS's came out (MFT & MVT & PCP) there were others of course but those three are the the progenitors of z/OS and IBM has been *FAMOUS* for its compatibility. IBM *USED* to strive for this but no longer and is fast becoming the MS of Mainframes. To its credit IBM prided itself on this and bent over backwards making sure of it. Sadly now days its not uncommon when a new release of a component comes out its time for mass recompiling or relinking. IBM has gone down hill to the point where I wonder if it will survive another 10 years,
Give me a break. It wasn't Muslims who did the Holocaust nor the Crusades, nor the Spanish inquisition.
Only due to circumstance. We're screwed if those two groups ever realize they have more in common with each other than they do with the rest of us.
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
If it's changed at all, I can't tell.
Al qaeda doesn't have a space program, and they would love to kill every 'infidel' at NASA if they could.
I don't agree at all. The real problem is mundane procedures like power loss and restore were not documented. You train people and ensure your institutional knowledge isn't allowed to go stale. Just switching to the tech-du-jour is needlessly expensive.
The real wtf is they are apparently replacing a system requiring high availability with wintel, which is decidedly neither. Commodity hardware is good, but you should at least consider a higher reliability OS like UNIX or BSD or something else !!!
Now I agree there should be an End of Life risk assessment plan for this Tandem system with an indefinite date, such that they know where to get parts or coding expertise, in the absence they can get it running on currently available hardware, and if not consider alternative hardware/OS options and how long it would take to port.
But going Wintel? WTH?
Yes, the title should have read AMSAT-OSCAR-6 (AO-7).
Looking at space, radio, science and computing from a 'down-under' amateur enthusiast perspective.
modern PC climate?
.. but you'll find that it's a lot easier to get people to see things the way you do when you demonstrate a sensitivity to their beliefs. That's not being weak, that's about increasing your chances of having your viewpoints respected. If you don't care about whether people might be able to see things from your side, then why open your mouth in the first place?
time to learn
The term is in widespread use today specifically because it was used by conservatives to rile people up. Think of it as a social troll that people fall for millions of times a day on internet forums. He wasn't trying to be PC, he was just being civil. Of course the world isn't simple, of course you're going to say some things that are true that offend people
"Old man yells at systemd"
Windows Calculator or Minesweeper, I'm guessing.
Cheers
Me lost me cookie at the disco.
The oldest program could be the fundamental theorum of calculus. One of the intended purposes of Calculus was to have a language that a machine could use to generate proofs. The machine was never made, but the code lives on.
The question is very practical because e.g. one of parts of old Ma-Bells still sells a switch that has a year 2104 bug coded in mid-70s under multiple layers of virtualization.
Back in the 1990s I worked for a large local authority that used IBM mainframes running VM/CMS - some of the system files had datestamps back to the mid-1970s. I know my former employer doesn't use big iron any more, but plenty of people still do so I'd wager there's plenty of code from that era or earlier still running on IBM it.
>Military technology, especially in times of conflict, has resulted in a great deal of progress.
Ahh. So the real question we need to ask Obama, McCain, and the crooked lawyer is, "With whom will our next war be?"
hawk
Those PaleoCons won't rest until they've restored the monarchy.
I'm scared that if we don't change course from the PaleoCon path soon, there won't be any Wooly Mammoths left to hunt. THEN what will we do?!
I am offended by your offer to apologize. Sheeesh!! Gross!!
Well, if 1970ish is old then fortran libs are alive and kicking. Indeed I was just using a modern Matlab toolkit for computing uniform deviates on the surface of an ellipse. it simply wraps fortran dating to 1973.
This is fresh in my mind because I traced it back to the original published code when I found an error in the math. It computes the deviates wrong! (they are not perfectly uniform).
Ammusingly, I found in the process of doing this search for the origin, that the same code is widely used by global climate modelers to pick random points on the surface of the (ellipsoidal) earth. Maybe that's why 5 day forecasts don't work.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Social Security. Oh sorry, you didn't want that much money. How about the Space Shuttle or the International Space Station.
The other day, I was investigating some strange behavior in our production environment. I scanned through some piece of code written way back in 2001. After poking around for a couple hours, I find the offending code. The code was somewhat buggy and I found it right away, but fixing it proved to be challenging. After a hour or so, my frustrations got to me. It was so bad that I started to say "who wrote this crap?", only to realize that I wrote it 7 years ago. Alas, I had stumbled upon the oldest running code in my measly existence.
Coderz 4 Life
I'm not sure why you'd be asking that now. Why should they know?
If "coding" can include processes implimented in hardware (very hard ware, such as gears) then the WW II Axis crypto machine Enigma and the Allies' SIGABA would qualify. The former was recently replicated, so we know it's design, ie. code, is still valid.
Of course, if the definition extends to machines of this nature, then Babbages' Difference Engine would probably win. It was designed to be hard coded to solve polynomial functions. It was recently (1991; London Science Museum) built as a working model, so the design/code is proven, but the design/code itself dates to 1822 and was first implimented in 1849. The London machine is still working, so it should qualify as long as hardware coding is included.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
"Hello World" still runs pretty well on my machine.
I seem to have lost my bippy. Though i'm not sure if i ever had a bippy. Please dial 555-5555 if you have seen my bippy.
In general that may tend to be true, but I'm not sure it's always the case. I'd be willing to bet that the space race in the 60's produced more technological advancement than the "War on Terra" will ever produce.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bresenham's_line_algorithm
.....Binary (01000010011010010110111001100001011100100111100100111111)?
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
I am aware of that.
The grandparent was talking about rigor in general.
This applies to the ones writing the specifications as well.
Baboons are cute.
Is the light switch in my grandparent's house. The data entry is an ongoing project.
YKK Turing Machine Algorithm Pattern Closed.
It is called RNA - it ran already before DNA, which has been around for 4+ billion years or so, and it is still running in all known lifeforms.
Microsoft Paint!
According to Dyson's book on 'Project Orion' many of the codes developed for this project are still in use - albeit with some modifications - in the design of nuclear weapons.
AC
You must have pulled a muscle, jerking your knee so violently like that.
This could be apocryphal, but when I worked for Salomon Brothers (pre Smith Barney) in the mid 90's, there were tales of COBOL programs there that had been running since the late 50's. Some of which the source code had since been lost.
Before you design for reuse, make sure to design it for use.
What about the microcode which implements the intruction set for early microprocessors used in the F14A Tomcat (1968-70) or the Gould Modicon 084 PLC (1969 launch)?
http://www.microcomputerhistory.com/
http://www.plcdev.com/plc_timeline
The Modicon 084 is probably in use in some machinery somewhere. Of course the F14A has been upgraded but if they still use the same chip then it probably will have the same instruction set microcode
News flash: They are smart.
Married. Yo' bippy not an interest item. Sorry.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
I wrote some UPKE code in the 70's to enable our AIW to CKN with the PCXIX on the floor above. We drilld a NYWD connection with an ORXW we borrowed from the WLZD department. Needless to say it is PWOC to this day. :)
Tommy Flowers designed and built "Colossus" in 1943: the world's first practical electronic digital information processing machine.
A working example exists today at Bletchley Park.
Although missile defense may be a waste of money, the objectives of the program seem somewhat clear to me (eg. to defend against missiles!)
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
The question of the oldest code still running made me think of a job I had which was to write some client-server software that talked to a program written on a mainframe.
I knew the program had been running since around 1969, but what really surprised me was when I was in a meeting, and two of the older programmers, both getting ready to retire, mentioned that so-and-so had died, and everyone got quiet.
Naturally I had no idea who they were talking about and asked who this person was, and it turned out it was the last living original programmer of the program. Everyone else still alive had been brought in to maintain it.
So when thinking about old code, it's always made me wonder where those programmers are today...
I think.
"From the SABRE airline reservation system, the first major civilian software project (one that is still running, albeit in a different form)"
http://www.techsoc.com/histsoft.htm
"These products offer real-time interface solutions preferred by travel companies world-wide for reservations, ticketing, check-in and a multitude of other business functions."
http://www.sabreairlinesolutions.com/products/serve/qik.htm
Whatever one thinks of the war in Iraq, it has forced us to prioritize scientific and engineering issues we previously had not emphasized. As they say, necessity is the mother of invention. For example:
Techniques to defeat highly asymmetric warfare tactics such as the use of IEDs. There's been a lot of money pouring into trying to solve that problem, because solutions will save lives. Google "counter IED" and you get an idea of the communications and jamming technologies involved.
Trauma medicine has been getting a lot of innovation. For example, the Pentagon has a 250 million dollar effort to create the ability to regrow limbs, noses, etc of wounded soldiers. The HemCon bandage, a portable heart-lung machine, and improvements in treatment methodologies are discussed here.
Materials science has been getting the kind of attention it hasn't seen in a long time. One example with obvious civilian application is the push for novel flame-retardant woven and knitted fabrics.
Looking more to the future, the war's need for intelligence from foreign-language sources has driven DARPA to fund automatic translation research. That's a real tough problem, but if they can solve it has enormous civilian applications.
The list goes on an on. I'm not saying it justifies a war, but war certainly does drive scientific and engineering research to solve thorny real-world problems.
Humour? I'm doing everything I can, and stop calling me Shirley.
Must we suffer through the rehashing of old Shadow arguments every election season? Sheesh!
"On the other hand, this statement might be a violation of the Fifth Amendment which protects a person from self incrimination"
No, just no.
You clearly have no idea wtf you're talking about, specifically regarding the fifth amendment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tandem_Computers
nohup rm -rf ~/. >& zen &
*cough* missile defense *cough* Or *cough* Global Warming *cough*
In 1960, I wrote a program that computed fan capacity tables for use by HVAC sales engineers for American Air Filter. The original use was to run this program over a wide range of inputs and print the tables in a hard cover book for HVAC enginners to use when designing the heating and air conditioning system for a large building. The last time I checked, this program is still being run, only today it is being run on laptop computers and the HVAC engineer enters the specific input for the building (s)he is working on.
"When you try to express a concept that might piss people off, and you aren't trying to piss people off, saying so and expressing sensitivity to their beliefs isn't "PC", it's basic technique of a civilized person in conversation."
No, that's just what people like you say to try and censor the things you don't like.
Calling it "civilized" is your interpretation, and I disagree. Meanwhile, there is no possible argument that it is not censorship, even if you think it's for a "civilized" reason.
Censorship isn't "civilized" no matter how you rationalize it.
Yeah, but we outgrew such behavior (mostly). Have they?
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
The Veterans Affairs payroll system "Personnel and Accounting Integrated Data" (PAID) Pay System was first planned in the Kennedy administration (1963) and deployment begain in 1964. See VA History Highlights for 1963 & 1964
I don't know what type of system it is running on now (probably OpenVMS from HP), during the 70-90's it ran on VAX VMS.
During the earlier part of this decade, they tried upgrading to a system built on Oracle Financials. The develoment project was called CoreFLS, was budgeted at $400+ million and was canceled as a failure after spending $240+ Million. So they are still running PAID, as far as I know.
As I see it, yes, the shadow arguments are necessary. In part because the same old chestnuts come out every election season. The original poster was using a variant of "we should use the money from program X to pay for program Y, because I think Y, but not X, is important."
Keep in mind that in the 60's, the space race had military and political implications. I don't know what the "War on Terra" is, but it doesn't sound like any of the genuine military conflicts that the US indulges in.
I'm offended by your apology.
Stick to your guns man.
One definite place to look would be financial institutions and small - medium sized businesses that have managed to stay in operation for many years.
Financial institutions because they are notoriously conservative, and will rarely change a system that works for them. (Partially because of legal requirements and partially because of that conservative inertia as well as their general disinclination to spend money modernizing, thinking back about the difficulty that I had with one bank getting electronic payments years ago, and now they want everything electronically debited!)
Small businesses, mainly because they are so frugal they will keep an ancient old hacked system running until it's likely to be in imminent danger of dying. Typically they will be in the accounting department for similar reason as financial institutions. I had an experience c. 5y where where one such company was still using a mini-frame dating from the late 70s or early 80s which we had all sorts of fun trying to get it updated from reel-to-reel tape for a y2k update. I'd hazard that the beast had NEVER been updated since purchase, as certainly no one was maintaining the hardware. (Had quite a sophisticated little tape feeding mechanism when it functioned properly though, much better than many similarly aged machines that I had seen, unfortunately I've since forgotten the make.)
NASA and AFAIK the military tend to use older technologies for many electronics as the theory went that the deficiencies of the technology should be well understood with multiple workarounds for any problems encountered. Same idea was apparently applied to the software aalthough it would appear that this is changing slowly.
Auto companies' also tend to be at least 10y behind the tech curve, less i n some areas, and MUCH MUCH more in others... Likely depending upon visible "features" provided and cost.
Mostly I'd say the best place to find ancient pieces of hardware and software would be with highly conservative institutions, or companies' that are unwilling or unable to spend money on modernization.
I'll bet there's a VAX on a factory floor somewhere running something that hasn't changed since the late '70's. It doesn't break and keeps something going. Optionally, I suspect there's some IBM 360 (or earlier) code that's still being used.
and -- oh my God! -- it's full of stars!
Your mom!
Speaking of which, there are two replicas (originals?) of Babbage's Analytical Engine which actually work and are demonstrated with their original algorithms.
I remember reading somewhere that the museums sell list of primes calculated by the machine, with Ada's original code, but I can't find the link right now. (Or was it roots of a polynomial?)
Those would certainly count as the oldest program still running, but I can't find more info on the program being demonstrated ATM.
Gmail's beta version
Blas libraries history dates back to 1979 (http://www.netlib.org/blas/faq.html#1.2, http://www.netlib.org/blas/faq.html#1.2), their netlib implementation probably contains some routine which has remained unchanged since then. They are still widely used.
this post contain no useful information, no need to mod it down
how about:
$c=$a
$a=$b
$b=$c
The Pickering Nuclear Generating Station in Pickering, Ontario was still using IBM 1800s (circa 1968) in 1990 when I worked there. Looked like old Sci Fi stuff, with the switches on the front, and the paper-tape software loader. 64K held all the reactor-running programs. I hope I'm not aiding and abetting here.
10 Print "Hello"
20 GOTO 10
I can't tell whether or not you realized I was making a Babylon 5 joke.
I cry foul on the question, anyway. Isn't all code patched in binary after it's running anyway? I know that's how we do things here at NIST.
sigs, as if you care.
Well I can't beat the LEOs, but if you disqualify them for using emulation I may have a winner.
:P
I recently started working at the William J. Hughes Technical Center in Atlantic City, which is an FAA Research and Development campus. I work in the Target Generation Facility, where we simulate air traffic control scenarios to test new approaches, recreate problems with existing systems, or try out new software/hardware for air traffic control centers. Not too long after I started, a coworker took me on a quick tour of the labs and showed me "something amazing".
What he showed me were a row of about a dozen UNIVAC machines in the back of one of the lab areas. What's even more amazing was that they're still plugging away. After doing some research, turns out they're running one of the old versions of ARTS (Automated Radar Tracking System) so that we can simulate older ATCs. Depending on which version, that means the code is from anywhere between the late 60s and around '74 (which is when, I believe, ARTS III was rolled out).
Seeing a visual representation of the register values on a machine (and having them change slow enough that you can actually get some idea of the values) really makes you appreciate how far we've come. Coworker and I laughed that the Razr I was taking a picture of them with probably had 10000X the processing power as those boxes... And it's a piece of crap...
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_programming_languages During a nine-month period in 1842-1843, Ada Lovelace translated Italian mathematician Luigi Menabrea's memoir on Charles Babbage's newest proposed machine, the Analytical Engine. With the article, she appended a set of notes which specified in complete detail a method for calculating Bernoulli numbers with the Engine, recognized by some historians as the world's first computer program. But some biographers debate the extent of her original contributions versus those of her husband.
So NASA's contributions outweigh the DOD's contributions? DOD's contributions like... the internet?
note the word "civilized" typically connotes that you are attempting to be a civil person. While being an opinionated asshole is easy and fun
Not apologizing for your opinion doesn't make you an asshole.
Nobody should have to apologize for their opinions, we're all entitled to have them. There is nothing uncivilized about stating your opinion without apologizing for it.
Breathe In. Breathe Out. Eat. Eliminate. And we still don't have the bugs out!
Does "Hello World!" count? LOL
...its darn near a sure bet that its developers never thought it would be around that long.
What would we have if designers were trained and we had infrastructure to PLAN on a program being used for 200 years?
earlier comments to the effect that code is inherently long lived vis a vis hardware is a point well taken and mother nature provides the strongest example. Dinosaurs, dodo birds and Neanderthals are all gone but many "protein subroutines" in their vanished DNA are STILL "conserved" in our very own DNA.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
Well, you have eliminated all uncertainty. I was wondering why "Shadow" was capitalized. Unfortunately, I was thinking Dr Who not B5.
At the Computer History Museum, volunteers have restored three transistor/core memory computers: an IBM 1620 (from 1959), an IBM 1401 (from 1959), and a DEC PDP-1 (from 1960). There are also emulators for the machines on PCs. We are running original programs, including diagnostics, on these machines. Of historical interest is playing Space War! on the PDP-1, written in 1962. CHM has the second instantiation of Babbage's Difference Engine#2 on loan. If you consider Babbage's notes on how to set up the machine to be software, then those date to about 1847. I have set up the Engine based on those notes and cranked out the results.
Herman Hollerith wrote the algorithms to calculate the US Census in 1890 I doubt the US census has been changed since. Most US Federal Systems are still using old technology. I think the US Census is still calculated by IBM mainframes and IBM was founded by Hollerith and the Census contract got them started in business.
The language and OS may have changed, but the algorithms should still be the same.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Offtopic, but I'm say it anyway. It's because the tired old Vorlon arguments come up so often too. Besides, wouldn't you rather have political discussion about it, than battle crabs in low orbit strafing out cities?
That which is done from love exists beyond good and evil
What? A subtle, unintentional troll followed by a polite apology? You must be new here!
Um, where have you been living? The Crusades were a direct result of the MUSLIM invasion of the Holy land. I'll grand you the Spanish Inquisition, which though a reaction to the Muslims, was not perpetrated by the Muslims, and I'll grant that Cristians have been far more effective at killing Jews than the Muslims, but I won't attribute it to Muslim kindness, but simply to inefectuality. Back to the body count argument, if one were to shout "Allah loves gays" in a Muslim fundamentalist rally, there would be quite a few "friendly fire" incidents. Whereas if one were to shout "Jesus loves Gays" at a Christian fundamentalist group meeting, it is far more likely that only the person who shouted it would be killed, so the body count would indeed be higher with the Muslim group. Though I could be wrong. After all, a riot is not the sort of organised and systematic killing that Christians are good at.
That which is done from love exists beyond good and evil
speech act? that's Leftie-talk.
Von Neumann wrote the first stored program to calculate trajectories of artillery shells based on military algorithms and the EDVAC was the first computer to store programs in memory so that instructions did not have to be input repeatedly. So as long as this algorithm is still being used in war, somewhere on the planet, it is the oldest piece of code still running.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Quite obviously, it is a critical part of their technology platform :)
hawk
Please take your meds!
if you know it distresses the person you are talking to, then it does make you an asshole. You don't have to apologize, per se, but at least acknowledging the person's feelings on the matter is the civilized thing to do.
NOT doing that is very clearly sending the message that you don't care what your listener thinks. That may very well be the way you feel; but sending that message is not effective communication, and it's not civil, it's hostile and confrontational, and the cause of a lot of bad communications.
Either you respect your listener or you don't. The truth of that matter comes through very clearly and makes a difference.
Some scary systems written in JOVIAL are still running.
I worked on that program. Sorry, you are wrong. We had milestones and hit them. And our stuff worked, even when modified on the fly - c.f. the shootdown of the trashed intelligence satellite by an SM3ER with out software on an Aegis crusier.
Q.E.D. You are wrong.
The oldest piece of code was done by Heron of Alexandria. He invented automata in the first century.
Heron used cams, gears, pulleys, even pneumatics in his automata and were a programed sequence.
link
Antibiotics, Night Vision, Robotics for an example of advances made in each of those wars respectively.
I attend a crowded fundamentalist church and Jesus does love gays. It won't get you beat up by saying it either.
My fellow Americans, let's restore the death penalty for child rapists. Let's do it . . . for the children.
I wasn't alive for the Korean or Vietnam wars, but Iraq has seen the first wide-scale deployment of UAVs as well as the most technologically integrated fighting force ever.
Battlefield communications and coordination is still on the leading edge of networking, as there is no substitute for having an EWACS 300 miles away relay your communication to a command post 30 miles away. They to get that kind of service from your cell phone provider.
My fellow Americans, let's restore the death penalty for child rapists. Let's do it . . . for the children.
Well, without investing in research of means to kill each other we wouldn't have for example duct tape, teflon pans, GPS, computers, cheap electricity from nuclear power plants, Czechoslovak wolfdog and maybe even space program itself.
Krigl
De-bugging with an air-duster usually
http://www.juliantrubin.com/bigten/zusecomputer.html
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladder_logic
Most of the laws of physics haven't changed in about a dozen billion years, give or take... at least, 6,000 if you're a creationist.
Sorry, I don't have specific program names or locations, but there are Fortran and Cobol programs running in many large corporations that have been in use since the mid 1960's.
Everybody knows 3 people with my name.
Well, perhaps they didn't. Maybe someone discovered a buffer overflow somewhere :-)
My ex found some bug in a Fortran math library, and thought it was amusing that decades of simulations and other projects were now suspect. Soooo, I'm going to guess that Fortran math libraries are pretty old and apparently still in use.
What about in Terminator 3 when they reach the end and come across that 'State of the Art' equipped bunker!
,but they indicated it had been setup for quite some 'Movie Time."
That equipment was still running and I forget
main() {
printf("hello, world");
}
circa 4000 B.C.
I have a Jeep and a GT cruiser Turbo in my driveway. However, I seldom need to drive over terrain without roads, or do a 0-60 in 6.x seconds, let alone Travel at speeds in excess of 100mph.
Is the extra capabilities of my vehicles wasted? you could conceivably say that any time I'm not playing in the mud is wasted time in the Jeep, and anytime I'm not freaking out a Mustang owner with the GT is wasted. It's true that probably 95% of the time my needs could be met by the aforementioned Hyundai.
But.
I bought the Jeep essentially because I'm old. I grew up driving cars that you could lean against and they wouldn't crumple; I enjoy driving something that is built to handle rough treatment, and is deliberately built uncomplicated (1995 was last year of this), so that there are less things to go wrong. I enjoy driving something that if it breaks, I can almost certainly fix it with the skills I learned decades ago working on my '70 Cuda. It also doesn't hurt that I live in an area that gets frequent Tornados; no matter how many trees are down, no matter how many roads are washed out, if it's possible for a vehicle to get somewhere, I can get there. So I do not, in any sense, consider that extra capacity wasted.
Hmm. can't think of a good justification for the GT. good thing I don't care, its fun.
I've been hearing this "unused RAM is wasted RAM" nonsense for quite a while, but it mainly started coming out when Vista started getting press (you can check me on this with google, check the dates). If the main reason for something being stated is because of something involved with Vista, that shoots its credibility right there.
The reasons to have as much free RAM as possible are obvious, or at least I really thought they were; In a world where the cost of RAM is cheap in comparison to the cost of upgrading a system in other ways, I don't think it ~can~ change.
Without knowing more completely the individual criteria for employing the statement, I can't craft a suitably smart-assed remark, though.
Here are some rules of thumb that might apply: given identical hardware, the operating system that can perform all the presently needed hardware operations and provide a stable platform for all the presently needed, and reasonably predicted future applications, without crashing, using the LEAST AMOUNT of RAM, is the better one.
The Operating System that is best at keeping out of the way of applications, merely letting them run, without hindering them in anyway, Best allowing them to make use of any hardware available and allowing them the most amount of RAM to operate in (subject to the next rule), is the better one.
Sub-rule of thumb (rule of Pinky?): If an application is designed to fully integrate with an operating system to the point that it essentially is the operating system to all hardware intents and purposes, it'll run better on that Operating system that it would on one it was not specifically designed to run on. So unless you love the way that operating system does everything else you might need, and everything in the future you think you are likely to need, don't buy it if there is a choice.
I can see some circumstance where the statement could be justified; if you are building a purpose-built system, and you are certain that the system in question is going to be doing the same tasks for its service life, and that the operating system and it's application are mature enough that a change in it's requirements are extremely unlikely, go ahead and just put enough ram in to accommodate the OS and applications maximum footprint; you won't need anymore. Extra RAM would indeed be wasted.
I might take that a step further, though. Might not something on the line of a Embedded system be better? or even a Jacquard loom-sort of mechanical device?
However, if you think your application(s) might change, or you might want to run something in the future that you don't know the requirements for, or you might run software that wasn't specifically designed for a certain application, I posit that maybe
Why, yes, I AM a Pagan Libertarian.
At a former workplace the in-house software written in COBOL used a separate executable to manipulate variable length VSAM records. I never bothered opening up the executable to see when it was compiled, but the date in the dataset was sometime in 1980. (I doubt this date was fiddled with, although it's quite possible).
Apparently the routine came from another government department as binary only (with copybooks, of course). Nobody knew where the source was.
I have no doubt that this program would still be in use today.
Boeing 707s were developed in the early 1950s and hundreds of are still flying today. I would imagine that at least one line of code from them original software is still running on these planes. That code is not only old, but it also is a life critical function. -Kitplane01
10 Print "Hello World!"
20 GOTO 10
I just saw Difference Engine No. 2 in action this weekend at the Computer History Museum. This is clearly the oldest code in the world that is running today.
(yes, I know it's not really a computer, just a calculator, but I think we can bend the spirit of the question a little to get such a clear answer.)
Funny. When Israel and Saudi Arabia were being fired upon by Saddam Hussein's scuds, not knowing what was in the warheads, they thought land-based missile defense was a pretty good idea. And now that Japan has seen North Korea both detonate a nuke (albeit likely the size of a school bus) AND lob a missile completely across Japan, they rather appreciate the idea of sea-based missile defense. And we need look no further than Vladimir Putin's hostile reaction to the proposed eastern Europe missile *defense* system to see that not everybody thinks the idea is so God-Damned funny.
Don't trust anyone under thirty.
...That which is done from love exists beyond good and evil... Sounds like Fascism--"The ends justify the means".
Don't trust anyone under thirty.
Well, since they're deleting it, not using it, it hardly matters. Specifying DCB parameters here is a waste of time anyway. They should have been left off.
Most people don't even think inside the box.
I would say the military owns hardware with code still being used thats very old. When I was in the Army, I used special equipement to fix old tanks dating back to the late 60's. Some of these diagnostic computers are still being used to repair old equipment. Otherwise it would be my old Atari 800 that my daughter plays on once in awhile.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
These objectives seem very non-objective. Meaning, when the project is done, you can argue that all objectives were reached. I don't mean to pick on this one project - modern management tends this way. Failure-proof.
... something (#7). Say you manage to increase X by 20%. Did you maximize? "Yes we did, within the constraints we were given."
For example, maximize
10 goto 10
Let's really bake your noodle: what if you changed your code so it was now bit for bit the same as older code. Is it still new code?
I believe you are incorrect. Just because an opinion is unpopular in a particular place does not make it beyond the boundary of free speech. Shouting "Jesus loves gays" in a fundamentalist church is in no way a direct incitement to violence.
You see direct incitements to violence must be, well, direct. And then they must be incitements to violence. The statement fails both tests. Just because it is likely to produce violence does not mean the statement is inciting violence. And it is certainly not direct - there is no violence or lawlessness advocated by the statement.
Next, you've turned the whole issue upside down. While people are committing a crime when they attack you for such a statement, and your statement is a proximate cause of their actions, the statement "Jesus loves gays" in no way tries to rally the people to beat you up. That happens within their own minds as a reaction against your statement, their actions are not in agreement with your statement.
Maybe I'm too late to the discussion, but here you go.
Ten years ago I worked for a manufacturer of steam turbines. The code to design the turbines still had comments dated from the mid-Fifties in it, and it was obvious it really was that old, and that some parts had barely been touched since. This was in Fortran, although some of the newer parts were in C.
I'm fairly certain that the code is still being used, due to the way it is being maintained (just update and patch, no throwing away and starting over).
Right here
You lose. Go force your PC bullshit on someone else, thanks.
Why would I be tired, it was easy and fast. You made it so.
You're a liar and that quote proves it. Saying "nuh uh" doesn't change that.
I wouldn't wonder, people like you do that when caught red handed. Just like you did in that last post.
If one settles the common denominator to be something that's currently included in a Linux distro, and open source, then I'd say that Maxima -- a symbolic computation system written in Lisp -- is the oldest one. Copyright dates from early 70s.
You make a good point. I didn't consider it fully enough, it seems. While I don't doubt that shouting that in a fundamentalist church can be reasonably expected to cause violence, the phrase itself is definitely not a call to commit a violent act; rather it is someone expressing themselves (albeit in a rather unusual manner).
Regardless of the circumstances, if the people then attack you they are committing a crime. Ironically, the government would never prosecute someone in that situation, even if their statement fulfilled the Brandenburg v. Ohio test. They would probably instead offer you immunity in return for being the star witness :-)
"All you need is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure." -- Mark Twain
[..snip..] I used to work at Thinking Machines [..snip..]
Then you would really love this Daily WTF.
Corporate Gadfly
Jonathan Archer: the most beaten up Enterprise captain in Star Trek history
It's also telling that after I shut you the fuck up, crushed your moronic points, and made you back off your idiotic assertions, you do exactly what you chastised others for originally and make yourself a hypocrite in the process.
DId I ever claim you did?
You mean like you did right there in the line above this right?
More backpedaling, more hypocrisy.
More proof that I was right and you're an imbecile.
I do enjoy that you are obviously all worked up and flustered by your inability to refute a single point I've made. It's fun to see you completely failing at communication using your "effective" methods while I have quite clearly demonstrated my point, that you're an idiot, using the methods you denounced.
How does it feel to get crushed and be unable to do anything buy cry about it?
If i remember correctly the oldest piece of code would have to be the most basic code ever, the code to convert binary to decimal. It was created back in the fifties by one of the guys in the mit model rail road club to be the most space efficient code possible.
I worked on a Lockheed project about 10 years ago where all of the exterior surface data for many of the old airplanes (C5, P3, C-130, etc.) was still on IBM punch cards. in order to cut a section, they had to look up the approx. coordinates of each individual surface in one system, which would tell them what set of punch cards to obtain (there was a whole wall full of punch card cabinets). They would then get the punch cards, load them in another machine, which would read the cards, load the mathematics into a special program which would calculate the curve and translate it into CADAM. There were 3 guys who knew how to extract the data, and two of them were in their 70s. Source code long long long gone. As a point of reference, the C-130 was developed on paper in the 40s. I don't know when the program was developed, but the computers they were running on, looked like they came out of the 50s themselves, and I've seen enough old computers to know.
Yes but NASA has time-machines, or they did have before they went back and burnt the original blueprints ;)