Hans Howe

what Dave Winer says…

Why can’t we run software that was written 25 years ago?

I would like to write software that people can run 100 years from now. Clearly that’s not going to happen.#

Ward Cunningham tells a story about how he wrote Hypercard apps for his kids as bedtime stories. He would love to be able to run that software today, share it with his kids and grandkids. But there’s no way to run it. He says this is wrong. I agree, emphatically.#

We can still play music written by people who lived in the 1700s. You can visit buildings that were built 500 or more years ago, and use them the more or less way they were originally designed to be used. But for some reason we can’t run software written 25 years ago. Technically, if we wanted to develop in a way that made this possible, we could. But each generation apparently believes there’s not enough value in the software written by previous generations. Which probably has something to do with why so much know-how is lost every decade or so. #

This originated in a Facebook thread started by Doug Purdy.#

PS: Look at this thread about Turbo Pascal for an idea of how much interest there is in the idea of running software that was written not so long ago. When I posted the link, I had no idea the kind of response it would get. Turbo Pascal was wonderful. And they didn’t invent new syntax. A very important concept. #

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via Spaceweather…

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Subject: {OT} “M$ is downloading Windows 10 to your PC ‘just in case'” Date: Thu, 10 Sep 2015 14:06:14 +0200
From: Yrrah
Newsgroups: alt.comp.freeware

M$ “has confirmed that Windows 10 is being downloaded to computers whether or not users have opted in.(…)
The symptoms are repeated failed ‘Upgrade to Windows 10’ in the WU update history and a huge 3.5GB to 6GB hidden folder labelled ‘$Windows.~BT’.(…)
Microsoft told us: ‘For individuals who have chosen to receive automatic updates through Windows Update, we help upgradable devices get ready for Windows 10 by downloading the files they’ll need if they decide to upgrade. When the upgrade is ready, the customer will be prompted to install Windows 10 on the device.’
In other words, if you are patching via Patch Tuesday, as you should of course be, then you are going to get a big hefty folder on your hard drive ready so you can update to Windows 10 on demand.(…)” From:

F*ck M$!

Yrrah

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September 7th 2015

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