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Comment by JackSlateur | Hacker News Reader

Just for the context, I am employed by a multi-billion company (which has more than 100k people)

Here, I'm in charge of some low level infrastructure components (the kind on which absolutely everything rely on, 5sec of downtime = 5sec of everything is down)

On one of my scope, I've inherited from a 15 years-old junkyard

The kind with a yearly support

The kind that costs millions

The kind that is so complex, that has seen so less evolutions other the years that nobody knows it anymore (even the people who were there 15y ago)

The kind that slows everybody else because it cannot meet other teams' needs

Long story short, I've got a flamethrower and we are purging everything

Management is happy, customers are happy too, my mates also enjoy working with sane tech (and not braindamaged shit)

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Yes, this is the key distinction: old software that works vs old software that sucks.

The one that sucks was a so-so compromise back in the day, and became a worse and worse compromise as better solutions became possible. It's holding the users back, and is a source of regular headaches. Users are happy to replace it, even at the cost of a disruption. Replacing it costs you but not replacing it also costs you.

The one that works just works now, but used to, too. Its users are fine with it, feel no headache, and loathe the idea to replace it. Replacing it is usually costly mistake.

But that software was probably nice, back in the day

It slowly rot, like everything else

Or it doesn't. Because "software as an organic thing" like all analogies is an analogy, not truth. Systems can sit there and run happily for a decade performing the needed function in exactly the way that is needed with no 'rot'. And then maybe the environment changes and you decide to replace it with something new because you decide the time is right. Doesn't always happen. Maybe not even the majority of the time. But in my experience running high-uptime systems over multiple decades it happens. Not having somebody outside forcing you to change because it suits their philosophy or profit strategy is preferrable.

My guess is that most stuff is part of a bigger whole, and so it rots (unless it is adapted to that ever-changing whole)

Of course, you can have stuff running is constraint environment

Or more likely the 'whole' accesses the stable bit through some interface. The stable bit can happily keep doing it's job via the interface and the whole can change however it likes knowing that for that particular tasks (which hasn't changed) it can just call the interface.

Sounds like that is a different issue. I prefer to avoid spending a few weeks migrating software that i understand and support to a new OS when i dont have to. Some of it is 30 years old, but it has had all the bugs worked out.

You're talking about software. The other person is talking about OS. Big difference.

This is exactly the same thing: OS is nothing but software. And, in this specific case, we are talking about appliance-like stuff, where the OS and the actual workloads are bundled together and sold by a third party

> I am employed by a multi-billion company (which has more than 100k people)

In my personal experience, this could mean that you're really good or that you're completely incompetent and unaware that computers need to be plugged to a power outlet to function.

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