[ninefathom]

It seems to be nearly forgotten that Once Upon a Time, business and scientific computing were more or less different universes.

The two paradigms eventually merged, but there was a problem: it wasn't really a merger. It was more that scientific computing became the implied default, and simply absorbed new and emerging business use cases over time, and actual business computing languished in senescent obscurity.

Scientific computing precepts are dreadful at business use cases (and the reverse is true as well). For an example, one need look no further than the horrors of IEEE 754 in financial calculations, which even Microsoft has admitted are a problem(1).

Now here we are. Every "general purpose" computing architecture and platform out there - from Windows on x86-64 to macOS on aarch64 to Linux on RV64 - is derived from the scientific computing lineage and paradigms.

Small wonder that modernizing and porting decades-old business software is a nightmare.

(1) https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/microsoft-365...