[ak_111]

legacy industry is sort of standard term not sure why you found it funny. It not meant to say they are less important.

From quick google: "Legacy industries are those that have been around for a long time. These industries dominate a specific market and have not always had a positive approach to innovative ideas."

[svennek]

Legacy is mainly a marketing term for someone wanting a piece of an existing, big market. It also usually implies that you expect it to be closed down and replaced...

[saiya-jin]

Well this is Hacker's news, you label something legacy like code, its never a nice thing or showing some respect to product/creators, rather contrary. TBH its also the first time hearing about this term, its simply not common, not even here and much less in general population.

And I have to strongly agree with OP, I couldn't care less about fate of FAANGs of these days, but I do care about those 'legacy' businesses tremendously.

As for original topic - if it works for 3-4 decades, don't be the stupid guy and change it. Tremendous risk to core business with little to gain.

[ak_111]

Your comment doesn't make sense, why in Hacker News should I show more respect to Walmart and JP Morgan rather than google or apple by calling the former legacy industry and the later big tech, and why are you so worked up about it?

Relying on the existence of one vendor with highly unportable and unmaintainable code carries its own risk and my post is asking whether it justifies the cost.

[svennek]

It also gives you the opportunity to use their mainframes advantages to the very max. Not the "common feature set" but the very "best features" you can get out of your tech choice.

I do the same, I have run PosgreSQL for more than 2 decades now and I don't care about portability to any other database, all of which I consider inferior (and yes, I do follow most of their releases).

[arethuza]

"These industries dominate a specific market and have not always had a positive approach to innovative ideas"

Google is itself starting to sound a bit like that!

[handsclean]

I’m not GP, but I found it funny because the term is misusing the word legacy. It doesn’t fit other usage of the word or the dictionary definition of the word. I didn’t look it up because I didn’t think to, it looks like a normal use of an adjective, not a term.

[deterministic]

Legacy means highly valuable and proven. Non-legacy means unreliable and highly unlikely to ever make money. Legacy software runs the world. Without it western civilisation would collapse.