[bluGill]

My company still has machines we made in 1950 that customers use in their business. They buy replacement parts from us. While we would love if each of those customers spent half a million dollars every few years to replace those old machines, we can't force them to do that. We can make some money from replacement parts though, so long as we are willing to set out sights low enough. Things that old are mostly mechanical so it is easy for someone to learn how to support them, and it saves the customers a lot of money. In the end we are proud that things we made 70 years ago are still being used in the real world for their original purpose.

You should learn the same: take pride in the fact that things you wrote years ago are still useful. Part of that means write good code so that it is easy to fix any newly discovered hack, without having to update everything else to the latest.

[salamander014]

Using physical hardware for as long as possible is absolutely the right mindset. For cost, reliability, environmental reasons, and many more.

This post was about an operating system (Software).

People shouldn't be using code that is no longer supported (support it yourself or don't use it, it's dangerous).

And people should be rebuilding their infrastructure from scratch as often as possible. That's the only way to prove you've built something reliable, auditable, and correct.

VMs and containers make that very easy and achievable for even the smallest of teams.

Linux goes to great lengths to support lots of different (and old) hardware. Linus has said many times, if you maintain it, it can stay.

[dnautics]

Maybe moving forward that's true as efficiency hits limits, but you really shouldn't use old hardware if the new hardware so outstrips it's efficiency that switching to the new hardware amortizes the cost of the new hardware plus the cost to decommission the old hardware

[icedchai]

In the real world you see companies running the same old unpatched distro for years. I had a contract job at a company that hadn’t updated one of its systems in over 3 years. Several systems with 1200+ day uptimes. Nobody wanted to update anything since it might break. Even a reboot was frowned upon. This was at a “real company” with 1000’s of employees and a huge IT staff. Truly sad.

[johannes1234321]

The issue with software is that software is still in its infancy and we have a hard time to build software, which is "nice" to use and will work in 10 years time. This becomes especially worse with modern stuff connected to a network, where security plays a major role. And it is bad with Web stuff, where compatibility with "advanced" features can be a problem with future clients.

[RhysU]

And yet one can find 20 year old software in many domains that just keeps plugging away. The problem isn't infancy. It's an industry that monetizes planned obsolescence and chases shiny. Many of us might as well sell bellbottoms followed by skinny jeans followed by bellbottoms.

[bluGill]

Very true. It is something we as an industry need to learn.

[klelatti]

This is very interesting - and bravo for making something that lasts so long. Can you share anything more about what those machines do and why they are so durable?

[throwawayboise]

In general most older machinery was designed to be repairable. Often using industry standard sizes for things such as motors, bearings, relays, screws, etc. As long as you can get (or make) the parts and are willing to maintain the equipment, you can keep using it.

[klelatti]

Indeed. It’s often the case too that it becomes outdated - more modern designs are more efficient etc. I’m probably more intrigued / surprised that it’s economically effective to keep a seventy year old machine working.