| I use to work on hospital lab software. * It was over 20 years old by the time I started * It was written in Fortran * Variable names were single and double digits * Each fortran program would run in isolation but had a shared memory process * It was formally a terminal program but a weird Java frontend was created so everything looked like Windows GUI * All program names were four letter acronyms * All data was stored in fixed width binary "flat" files * It previously was under CVS version control, but each install slowly drifted apart, so each site had it own unique features and bugs. * I once had to move a significant feature from one install to another using only patch files generated from the work done on the original install. |