[bombcar]

I'd say something like TeX might be a software cathedral, and even that one isn't going to last much longer than Knuth himself (almost everyone today doesn't run TeX, they run a compatible software platform, some are even entirely different).

But even a Cathedral changes over time, and your work may not last; but all human work is a shrill scream against the eternal void - all will be lost in time, like tears in rain. The best we can do is do the best with what we have in front of us. And maybe all the work you did to make sure your one-off database code correctly handled the Y38 problem back in 2000 will never be noticed; because your software is still running and didn't fail.

[kragen]

pretty sure most latex papers and chapters are formatted with tex82, though translated from pascal to c

[bombcar]

Most people use pdfLaTeX or XeTeX, which may have some basis in the original Tex82 but have since moved on, at least in code.

[kragen]

aren't pdftex and xetex just patched versions of tex82

[bombcar]

> pdfTEX is based on the original TEX sources and Web2c

So it at least ties back to original code. XeTeX appears to be similar but with even more extensions, but other of the "TeX" tools are complete rewrites.

[earthling8118]

Maybe, but I've moved on to tectonic. Which surely isn't in the same language.

[jfk13]

Last I checked (though it's been a while), I think tectonic basically wrapped the xetex code.