What happens when something breaks, and there's no one left to fix it?
Auld Lang Syne
The passing of the first generation of programmers brings to light the predicament of what to do when software outlives its practitioners.
An article about the Voyager Deep Space Probes circulated recently on Facebook; after 40 years of flight, management was looking for programmers who knew Fortran, COBOL, and assembly language. The call for programmers proficient in these "ancient" languages garnered a lot of laughs from the younger programmers in our community but demonstrates a future problem that is just beginning to appear.
The one remaining original programmer on the Voyager project, Larry Zottarelli, is now 80 years old. Remember that Voyager has been flying for about 40 years, and its design really began perhaps five years before it was manufactured, tested, and launched, when Zottarelli was still fairly young. Probably a lot of the people working on Voyager did not think it would still be working 38 years later and would not believe that it might still be operating well into the 2020s. NASA needs programmers who can keep the software "alive."
This is not the first time I have run into situations of ancient hardware and software, but it is one of the most interesting because the hardware cannot be upgraded.
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Chaos Comes to KDE in KaOS
KaOS devs are making a major change to the distribution, and it all comes down to one system.
-
New Linux Botnet Discovered
The SSHStalker botnet uses IRC C2 to control systems via legacy Linux kernel exploits.
-
The Next Linux Kernel Turns 7.0
Linus Torvalds has announced that after Linux kernel 6.19, we'll finally reach the 7.0 iteration stage.
-
Linux From Scratch Drops SysVinit Support
LFS will no longer support SysVinit.
-
LibreOffice 26.2 Now Available
With new features, improvements, and bug fixes, LibreOffice 26.2 delivers a modern, polished office suite without compromise.
-
Linux Kernel Project Releases Project Continuity Document
What happens to Linux when there's no Linus? It's a question many of us have asked over the years, and it seems it's also on the minds of the Linux kernel project.
-
Mecha Systems Introduces Linux Handheld
Mecha Systems has revealed its Mecha Comet, a new handheld computer powered by – you guessed it – Linux.
-
MX Linux 25.1 Features Dual Init System ISO
The latest release of MX Linux caters to lovers of two different init systems and even offers instructions on how to transition.
-
Photoshop on Linux?
A developer has patched Wine so that it'll run specific versions of Photoshop that depend on Adobe Creative Cloud.
-
Linux Mint 22.3 Now Available with New Tools
Linux Mint 22.3 has been released with a pair of new tools for system admins and some pretty cool new features.