Slashdot Mirror
What's the Oldest Technology You've Used In a Production Environment?
itwbennett writes: Sometimes it's a matter of 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it,' sometimes corporate inertia is to blame, but perhaps even more often what keeps old technology plugging away in businesses large and small is the sense that it does a single, specific job the way that someone wants it done. George R.R. Martin's preference for using a DOS computer running WordStar 4 to write his Song of Ice and Fire series is one such example, but so is the hospital computer whose sole job was to search and print medical images, however badly or slowly it may have done the job. We all have such stories of obsolete tech we've had to use at one point or another. What's yours?
Sometimes it's a matter of 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it,' ,
If it ain't broke, break it.
...what is the oldest computer technology that you have used in a production environment?
It's not obsolete if it's still capable of performing its function within specifications.
The ability to *alter* it to match *new* specifications should be taken into account (if it's written in a language no one speaks any more), but that doesn't prevent it from functioning.
Systems that have to deal with altered specifications because the environment around (physical or virtual) them changes can become obsolete faster than systems that are disconnected from their environment.
Note: That's an excellent reason to keep your systems disconnected from the environment.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
Fairly much everyone uses TCP/IP, that dates from the 70's.