[jbverschoor]

Interestingly, i have a similar story.

I created a database publishing platform exactly that time, a was given full control. I created it in Java, and added a JavaScript engine for scripting templates. The initial product was also side in a few months. It also runs to this day. The war file could be run by any Java server. The code, while old, was in a reasonable state, given some of the migrations.

I never thought about the code being older than the people working on it

[chii]

There's nothing more permanent than a temporary fix put in while waiting for a permanent fix for a problem.

[stavros]

We have a saying for that in Greek: Ουδέν μονιμότερον του προσωρινού

"Nothing more permanent than the temporary"

[lb1lf]

In Norwegian we have the (made up, but widespread) word 'Permasorisk' (a mangling of permanent and provisorisk) to describe a solution which is by no means meant to be permanent, but solves the original problem well enough that there no longer is a need for the permanent solution...

[jbverschoor]

It was never a temporary 'fix'. The product eventually spun off into a new company and was recently acquired by a PE firm.

But yeah, creating software - or any kind of process actually - results in maintenance. If something is used a lot -> too many people depend on it. If the number of consumers/users isn't documented -> you don't know if you can turn it off, but for this problem you can inspect a year's worth of log files :)

[Rebelgecko]

I had a job once trying to help the government un-fuck a janky codebase that they were in the process of paying billions of dollars for. I remember opening a file that had some issues (IIRC it could only be compiled with a specific discontinued compiler) and seeing a comment that the file was created on my literal birthday. Was quite the surprise.