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by pdkl95
1783 days ago
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Bryan Cantrill: http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2004/08/28/the-economics-of-soft... >> software does not wear out. That isn’t to say that software never breaks (or isn’t broken to begin with), but software that works can work in perpetuity. A favorite example of mine is troff. The source for troff is some of the nastiest stuff ever written — but it works. It hasn’t been touched in years, and probably will never be: it’s written in a portable language (C) and relies only on the most basic OS facilities. troff will work indefinitely — it will never wear out. >> (The tragic footnote to troff is that its author, Joseph Ossanna, died tragically in 1977; the very fact that his software is humming along perfectly more than a quarter of a [century] after his death is a testament to software’s unique imperviousness to wear.) |
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