What Is the Oldest Computer Program Still in Use?

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/538966/what-is-the-oldest-computer-program-still-in-use/

by amalantony06 • 9 years ago

138 84 9 years ago

Because of its longevity, replacing the program will essentially mean replicating all the logic so that its input and output is perfectly duplicated - including any bugs or quirks it has. Any differences, I'm sure, will end up causing a domino effect of failures and inaccuracies in all the other antiquated systems this program talks to. So then the question becomes, "why bother?" and 58 years later it still chugs along. I know of code I personally wrote over a decade ago still being used in production happily every day, so I'm sure this is bound to be a much more common experience in the years to come.

iaw2• 9 years ago

It was written by Grace Hopper, there are no bugs ;)

portlander12345• 9 years ago

They wouldn't dare.

timthelion3• 9 years ago

"You can still find antique green-screen systems if you look hard—in some cases, a pleasant Web interface just disguises the old guts." - There is so much wrong with this sentiment! It's just kind of folded in there, the insinuation that "web interfaces are more pleasant" than TUIs. I cannot express how much this kind of writting annoys me. Why can't they tell the story without wedging in unbacked opinions. The sentence "You can still find antique green-screen systems if you look hard—in some cases, a Web interface just disguises the old guts." would work just as well.

bunderbunder• 9 years ago

I think that you might be very nearly alone in your sentiment that green screens offer as good a user interface as more recent technologies.

timthelion3• 9 years ago

Me and three upvotes in however many minutes. Plus all the old ladies at the supermarket who can enter a product code into the terminal without even looking at the screen, because the rules for what element is focused are so simple.

notalaser• 9 years ago

As "more recent technologies", probably not. (At least as good) as the non-native, slowly-responding, glitchy web UIs that are so hip lately, most likely yes, especially when it comes to tasks like data entry and the like.

dingaling• 9 years ago

From talking to the sales & service agents at ${COMPANY} after prototyping some 'New Generation' systems we determined that Web-based UIs had two advantages:

1. Multi-column layout with independent updates. Useful for presenting prompts and help information beside the main transaction window.

2. AJAX-style dynamic updates on data-selection.

Other than that there were few advantages to Web UI. In fact we had to spend some time developing Javascript functionality such as tab-order and F-key capture that are elementary, 'free' features with green-screen and which greatly improve transaction speed.

Any 5250 terminal emulator from the 1990s onwards offered copy-and-paste and multi-session capabilities so a Web UI didn't offer advantage there.

tyingq3• 9 years ago

I think that depends on what you mean by "good". Being able to complete transactions without taking your fingers off the keyboard is almost always faster.

So, if it's an application where the end user spends a lot of time, a green screen can be more efficient. Things like a call center, or the check-in counter at an airport, etc.

It does depend on a good text and boxes ui though. Green screens had things like pulldowns, copy/paste, etc.

peterwwillis2• 9 years ago

Nah. Green screens were great. Stuff today is crap.

How does a user interface? For a web site, primarily with a mouse. So, single touch input. For green screen they have an array of dedicated individual simultaneous input devices (known as "keys"). In addition, green screen often provides near-immediate response, whereas touchscreens can suffer from lag either in the physical interface or the unfortunate multiprocess operating system. Finally, green screen was designed to step quickly through the interface, where web requires lots of hunting around for what you want to do.

You simply can't interface better with an application than a single process dedicated application using fixed multiple inputs with immediate response. It's like web pages are a cart and horse and green screen is a race car.

nabla9• 9 years ago

Text terminal can provide superior user interface. They can be faster and very logical. When you use them several hours per day and master the system they surpass most modern UI's. Minimal distraction, fast access and less errors.

Good modern UI design uses common metaphors that make it easier to learn new systems that are used with mouse if you are familiar with metaphors. They are designed for the beginner. There is nothing that prevents modern UI designer from learning the lessons from old terminals and carefully crafting the application so that experienced users can use different screen layout with fast keyboard navigation. It's just very rare.

jwilliams2• 9 years ago

I've seen it many times, particularly in finance which still has plenty of VT100 applications.

The reason is that once you know the codes, you can navigate and enter data at a genuinely incredible rate. If you've ever watched an experienced operator on one of these applications you'd be amazed. For one loan processing application, the terminal was an order of magnitude faster than the Web-based interface that was being deployed.

The key here though, is "experienced". This is someone who has developed the knowledge and muscle-memory to operate at that speed. This also makes the system more brittle (and often harder to change). Critically, it also means it takes a lot of training and time for people to be productive.

The reason many big organizations dropped the terminals - they wanted to be able to train people quicker, not because it was more productive.

baddox• 9 years ago

I think you can hold your fire. Don't you think it is true that in some cases a pleasant web interface disguises the old guts of a legacy system? I see absolutely no insinuation that all web interfaces are more pleasant than TUIs.

Spooky232• 9 years ago

I'd disagree strongly. The dynamics of a web application are different than a terminal app.

You're average web-skinned 3270 app is generally a direct translation of whatever the app did done by a gang of contractors without any design consideration.

The problem with that is that for all of the most trivial of apps, the use cases were envisioned 30 years ago. That's usually a problem. For example, one app that I looked at that still had old documentation available. Their design was based around 90% of transactions were initiated by a clerk opening paper mail. The obtuse layout of screens was there because they processed mail to dispatch it to appropriate teams of clerks, and it was customized to each function. Today 90% of transactions are initiated by phone or webchat, and are expected to be resolved in one call.

Bad web implementations are common. But it's almost always bad to ape things that aren't understood, which is the case 80% of the time for webified temrinal apps.

mastazi• 9 years ago

You're average web-skinned 3270 app

Am I?

(Sorry I couldn't resist)

coldtea9• 9 years ago

There is so much wrong with this sentiment! It's just kind of folded in there, the insinuation that "web interfaces are more pleasant" than TUIs. I cannot express how much this kind of writting annoys me. Why can't they tell the story without wedging in unbacked opinions.

Not everything needs to backed. It's obvious that most people, at least most lay people, find web UIs better and more friendly than terminal style interfaces...

Pleasant is not something objective to be measured comparing TUIs and web UIS -- it's in how people see them, and it's clear that what the article says it true for most people.

toomanybeersies5• 9 years ago

TUIs are great for experienced users, but are terrible for inexperienced users.

A good example of where a simple GUI is useful is POS systems. Sure, you could use a TUI, but you'd have to train every 16 year old kid who works for you for 2 weeks over summer, which is going to cost you.

On the other hand, I've noticed that airlines still use a terminal emulator for their booking and check in system. They're amazingly fast at using it, most of the commands are 1 or 2 letters. But you're dealing with a smaller group of trained and skilled employees, with a much lower turnover and a much higher overall training requirement.

There's probably also legacy reasons why airlines use a TUI, but it seems that the staff never have any issues using it, I've never seen them having to consult a manual.

eeZah7Ux2• 9 years ago

TUIs are great for experienced users, but are terrible for inexperienced users.

Usability research proved this to be false again and again but unfortunately text is not showy enough.

tluyben27• 9 years ago

I developed POS systems for a friend who starts and runs places (restaurant-bars) that are the most successful in the region; always packed, making him pure gold. He insists on never hiring '16 year old kids during the summer' but rather have his decades long trained staff move from old to new place to properly train the new staff there. The system we made for him was absolutely optimized for hitting the screen as little and as fast as possible per order. This made it unusable for beginners however he argues he made a lot more money because of it: no queues at ordering so no risk of people walking away bored (this is very common with people who are not usual bar goers), less error prone etc.

If everything is ran like a gig economy then simple and wizard like interfaces are a must but for long running companies with long term staff it probably will show less efficient over time although no one will probably measure that in most companies.

A lot of projects we did were web interfaces on top of DOS or terminal projects; usually the companies did not want to replace the legacy because their seasoned employees who basically made all the money for them were very used to the old system. But now short term hires could do some specific tasks as well via the web interface.

slededit• 9 years ago

Back in my cashier days all the registers had 2x40 char LCD screens and that was it. Training was all of two days, and most of that was loss prevention and how to bag properly.

imgabe• 9 years ago

TUIs are great for experienced users, but are terrible for inexperienced users.

For most users in a professional setting, they will spend far more time as an experienced user than they will as an inexperienced user. Why optimize to the first 6 months or so of a persons job, when they might work there for years, or even decades?

DrScump• 9 years ago

Until 2014 (at the earliest, may have extended into 2015), the built-in ticketing kiosks at AT&T Park (San Francisco) ran on Windows NT PCs, with a 1999 copyright date on the boot screen (when it crashed).

stevenjgarner• 9 years ago

Emacs and vi date back to at least 1976: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2014/05/old...

throwawayish• 9 years ago

Notedly it runs on a very small configuration of an IBM mainframe (z10 BC - 8 GB of RAM), costing less than 100k USD.

tyingq3• 9 years ago

Not practical/legal due to IBM licensing, but the open source hercules emulator is stable enough to even run current z/OS on a linux box: http://pastebin.com/umhdBsPu

toolslive• 9 years ago

what about these ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrel_organ

flashman• 9 years ago

Is an organ really in the 'computer' class of machine? It doesn't "carry out an arbitrary set of arithmetic or logical operations," to quote the Wikipedia definition.

A barrel organ could be said to follow a 'program', if we're loose enough to mean 'a set of machine-readable instructions that cause a process to take place' but it is in no sense calculating a result based on logical operations.

protomikron• 9 years ago

Slightly off-topic, but meta user interface relevant:

IMHO Google has been so successful because of their user interface and not because of its superior algorithm. In essence it is a REPL where the E part is slightly non-trivial.

But I agree it is the best user interface. Files and processes are a great thing, but the shell built on-top of it glues everything together and for me is the most successful interface. However it would be nice to switch interpreters online, i.e. switch between e.g. Bash or Python and "human language" (like Google Search). Interestingly DuckDuckGo provides something similar via its '!' syntax.

metaxy2• 9 years ago

I think at least at first, Google's success was definitely because of the algorithm. Existing search engines were terrible. They primarily relied on text analysis and human edited web directories. You could search for something as basic as "pet food" and get a few relevant results and then a bunch of random garbage. When Google came out using PageRank, it was a whole new world. Every tech savvy person I know switched right away, and not because of the interface.

But no doubt the simple and elegant interface helped too, and has helped them stay ahead as the other search engines have caught up with their algorithm.

nickpsecurity2• 9 years ago

I agree. That PageRank was patented is only reason Google is what they are today. They would've been copycatted to much lower revenues or market share.

zigzigzag2• 9 years ago

Slightly non-trivial? :)

coldtea9• 9 years ago

IMHO Google has been so successful because of their user interface and not because of its superior algorithm. In essence it is a REPL where the E part is slightly non-trivial.

Nope, it was the superior algorithm. Other search engine at the time had similarly simple interfaces, but we all moved to Google (back in 2000 or so) because of the superior results.

dllthomas• 9 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus

zigzigzag2• 9 years ago

I think the more interesting thing about these ancient programs is the question of why projects to modernise them fail over and over again. Of course we can already guess many of the answers without even reading any post-mortems, but obviously these organisations were able to execute complex IT projects once upon a time and over the years lost that ability, leaving them stranded with ancient systems.

In the case of MOCAS I'm going to assume it's all of the standard reasons: weak management, absence of competition, over-reliance on the same small pool of defence contractors that know how to navigate byzantine federal procurement rules, etc.

coldtea9• 9 years ago

I think the more interesting thing about these ancient programs is the question of why projects to modernise them fail over and over again.

A lot of it is because they fail the KISS principle.

bch• 9 years ago

Specifically, suffer from second system effect [0].

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-system_effect

jmngomes• 9 years ago

Because that usually involves understanding a complex, mission-critical legacy system with no documentation, no support and implemented using little to no methodology or best practices.

sho_hn• 9 years ago

It’s widely accepted that the first computer program was written by Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, in 1842

Hmm. Hasn't this been widely disputed and disproven? I wonder why it keeps being circulated, and with such a bold tone.

toomanybeersies5• 9 years ago

Ironically (I think? Or is it Fittingly?), they're probably using MOCAS to try and find a replacement for MOCAS.

drdeadringer2• 9 years ago

My first real job out of college, classic DoD contractor gig, I walked in and was shown the spiffy VAX I was going to be using. I didn't know which was older, the computer or me. There's one sitting in the Computer History MUseum in Mountain View. Wirewrap, 4mb of RAM maximum and each 1mb was a square foot of circuit-board you'd have to slide in and lock into place with thumb-tabs. I felt my own obsolescent like an angry itch every day I showed up for work and turned it on.

The way I understand it, the Navy got tired of supporting that. "If you want more of our money, you'll upgrade this crap." So they did, and now it's one server rack with, wouldn't you know, such modern things like USB ports and 21st century OSs and ethernet capability. But that's crazy talk.

drdeadringer2• 9 years ago

I read a book by Vernor Vinge where the main character did some software archeology as part of his hobby and technological interests. He discovered that the program used to keep time was viciously ancient, and after looking into "epoch" figured that the old-calendar year "1970" must have been decided upon because "that was when humanity first landed on the moon".

bigiain• 9 years ago

For me, I still occasionally get a server monitoring email from a cron job running a Perl program that first mailed me in April '97. I've got no idea who's keeping that running... The "startup" I wrote that for (and later went to work for) has been dead a decade now.

(Scary though: this might mean _someone_ is still running a Redhat 5 or 6 linux machine or VM - that's a late'90's vintage Redhat, not Redhat Enterprise Linux. It's _possible_ I updated that Perl script when we moved to CentOS in the early 2000's, but surely if anyne's been updating it since then - they'd surely have taken my personal email address out of it???)

pogo• 9 years ago

Here's a great article with many more examples:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/249951/computers/if-it-aint-b...

My favorite is the 90 yr old Texas company that uses an IBM 402 from 1948. The computer uses plugboards - breadboard-like cards that are programmed by plugging wires like a patch panel. As of the date of the article (2012) they still used the plugboards, as well as a more modern card reader/puncher.

Edit: I just realized my example is also mentioned in the OP article, though there is more detail (and photos) in the PCWorld article I linked.

What Is the Oldest Computer Program Still in Use?

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