What are the oldest peices of computer programing in use?

frobisher

In an age where it seems all everything is supersceded every 12 months I wonder if there are any old bits of prgraming that haven't changed and are still in use. I was thinking maybe the programaing in personal calculators is probably the same shared program in all units for the last 30 years. I could be wrong though. Any other thoughts?

Ruu_Old

COBOL is still about, I don't know much about it though.

frobisher

Ruu wrote:

COBOL is still about, I don't know much about it though.

Any applications that it is still used in from back in the day?

jank

In terms of systems, As400 and VAX would be one of the older types, but im sure there are older

Hagar

Anything in Assembly language would be my bet.
Most higher level languages were compiled into assembly (objects .obj files ) before running.
I could be wrong though, it's happened before.

Archytas

frobisher wrote:

Any applications that it is still used in from back in the day?

A good few banks still use it on their back end. Pretty much because it would be a hugely expensive, complicated job to upgrade. Some however have anyway because it is quite hilariously old.

aidan_walsh

frobisher wrote:

Any applications that it is still used in from back in the day?

Much of the finance sector uses it extensively.

Hagar

Archytas wrote:

Some however have anyway because it is quite hilariously old.

And efficient...

jhegarty

the .php in the boards address is a fake.... its really written in RPG....

trout

Up until 6 months ago, the company I work for used several AS400 machines which were almost 15 years old. Some of the code base (Cobol) was written in the early 80's. The machines themselves along with all spares have been shipped to a company in Poland we have a relationship with, where they will be put back into production. :eek:

We also have a OS/390 host based internal messaging system (it's more than Instant Messaging, and less than eMail) which is based on software written by Volvo engineers over 30 years ago ... and it has barely changed since.

This messaging system supports over 12000 users and has not crashed or failed or had any kind of outage for over 10 years. :cool:

frobisher

I knew there would be lots out there. I wonder what the most high end application of something over say 20 years would be. Would NASA or the Russkies still be using code they developed back then?

zilog_jones

The last time I was in an AIB bank they were still running Windows 3.11 (or maybe NT3.51) on their PCs. And I've seen borked Bank of Ireland ATMs displaying the "It's now safe to shut down your computer" screen from NT4. Banks must like keeping things old-school.

DJB

Aertel: http://rte.ie/arts/2007/0622/aertel.html

Oh and check out the cool video of the launch:
http://www.rte.ie/laweb/smil/brc/brc80s_aertel_tv.smil (needs realplayer)

I wonder how much of that system has changed in 20 years?

Victor

frobisher wrote:

I knew there would be lots out there. I wonder what the most high end application of something over say 20 years would be. Would NASA or the Russkies still be using code they developed back then?

I imagine the Voyager series are still running on the software they were launched with in the 1970s.

zilog_jones wrote:

The last time I was in an AIB bank they were still running Windows 3.11 (or maybe NT3.51) on their PCs. And I've seen borked Bank of Ireland ATMs displaying the "It's now safe to shut down your computer" screen from NT4. Banks must like keeping things old-school.

The banks are notoriously conservative when it comes to computer (and other) systems. If it works and is secure, keep it. If you need to change, do it over months and years, in incremental steps.

Just to demonstrate how bad things can be - when TSB ATMs were first hooked up to the AIB system, there was an incompatibility if the transaction was rejected. Everytime I tried to take money from my TSB account on an AIB and was refused, money was added to my account.

I can only imagine the conversation went like (balance was 130):

AIB ATM: What is your PIN number?
Me: ****
AIB: Is **** the correct PIN
TSB: Yes
AIB ATM: How much do you want
Me: 140
AIB: Can he withdraw 140?
TSB: No
AIB ATM: Sorry I can't process that transaction
AIB ATM: Transaction refused. Please put 140 (back) into the account
TSB: OK
AIB ATM: How much do you want
Me: 135
AIB: Can he withdraw 135?
TSB: No
AIB ATM: Sorry I can't process that transaction
AIB ATM: Transaction refused. Please put 135 (back) into the account
TSB: OK
AIB ATM: How much do you want
Me: 130
AIB: Can he withdraw 130?
TSB: Yes

trout wrote:

This messaging system supports over 12000 users and has not crashed or failed or had any kind of outage for over 10 years. :cool:

The H4><ors can't write viruses for it, because they don't understand it.

seamus

Victor wrote:

The H4><ors can't write viruses for it, because they don't understand it.

But...but...in the movies they just write viruses, and they like infect everything, mobile phones, watches, alien spacecraft, small dogs. Computer viruses are, like, super, right?

Evil Phil

Those kind of virii are written by Gibson hackers.

michaelanthony

IBM mainframe security 'RACF' is still in use

Tom Dunne

Intel still uses Workstream which runs on a VAX and dates from the 70's and 80's.

440Hz

frobisher wrote:

Any applications that it is still used in from back in the day?

You we still teach it in Comp Sys at Uni :-o hehe

Khannie

Victor wrote:

I imagine the Voyager series are still running on the software they were launched with in the 1970s.

Good call. I think their nuclear power supply will run out in a few years.

The space shuttles are still using 8086's. I remember hearing that NASA were trying to dig out replacement parts on ebay.

biko

I know COBOL and JCL. Worked on the millennium bug for telecoms.
It's old but works well.

$ SET SOURCEFORMAT"FREE"
IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.
PROGRAM-ID. Iteration-If.
AUTHOR.

DATA DIVISION.
WORKING-STORAGE SECTION.
01 Num1 PIC 9 VALUE ZEROS.
01 Num2 PIC 9 VALUE ZEROS.
01 Result PIC 99 VALUE ZEROS.
01 Operator PIC X VALUE SPACE.

PROCEDURE DIVISION.
Calculator.
PERFORM 3 TIMES
DISPLAY "Enter First Number : " WITH NO ADVANCING
ACCEPT Num1
DISPLAY "Enter Second Number : " WITH NO ADVANCING
ACCEPT Num2
DISPLAY "Enter operator (+ or *) : " WITH NO ADVANCING
ACCEPT Operator
IF Operator = "+" THEN
ADD Num1, Num2 GIVING Result
END-IF
IF Operator = "*" THEN
MULTIPLY Num1 BY Num2 GIVING Result
END-IF
DISPLAY "Result is = ", Result
END-PERFORM.
STOP RUN.

cornbb

They still taught COBOL for certain modules at the comp sys course in UL a few years ago. It dates from 1959 according to Wikipedia :eek:

Evil Phil

Khannie wrote:

Good call. I think their nuclear power supply will run out in a few years.

The space shuttles are still using 8086's. I remember hearing that NASA were trying to dig out replacement parts on ebay.

I heard the space shuttle ran os2 warp for a number of its systems. Is this true?

markf909

cornbb wrote:

It dates from 1959 according to Wikipedia :eek:

Yes it predates the notion of specifying the syntax of programming language via a CFG (or nearly a CFG).
Consequently trying to create any form of analysis tools for Cobol are tricky to say the least.

timeout

Victor wrote:

I can only imagine the conversation went like (balance was 130):

AIB ATM: What is your PIN number?
Me: ****
AIB: Is **** the correct PIN
TSB: Yes
AIB ATM: How much do you want
Me: 140
AIB: Can he withdraw 140?
TSB: No
AIB ATM: Sorry I can't process that transaction
AIB ATM: Transaction refused. Please put 140 (back) into the account
TSB: OK
AIB ATM: How much do you want
Me: 135
AIB: Can he withdraw 135?
TSB: No
AIB ATM: Sorry I can't process that transaction
AIB ATM: Transaction refused. Please put 135 (back) into the account
TSB: OK
AIB ATM: How much do you want
Me: 130
AIB: Can he withdraw 130?
TSB: Yes

I think you have this wrong above. First time you have 130 and request 140. It refuses and adds 140 to your acccount. So now the second time you request 135 you have 270 so it should have not decline your request. In fact it should have given u 135 and left 135 in your account. Is that right or am I wrong on how I'm reading it???

marco_polo

timeout wrote:

I think you have this wrong above. First time you have 130 and request 140. It refuses and adds 140 to your acccount. So now the second time you request 135 you have 270 so it should have not decline your request. In fact it should have given u 135 and left 135 in your account. Is that right or am I wrong on how I'm reading it???

Think he meant that someone ballsed up the integration so that all requests were refused and refundedto the account. Nothing to do with the balance AFAIK.

I heard a few years ago that the Department of Social Security in the US was still using some systems that were written in a mainframe assembler language. I guess this could be true if they were written in the late 60's/early 70's. **DISCLAIMER** I cannot remember where I heard/read this so it my source could well have been some guy down the pub .

I imagine the cost of upgrading such a system would be phenomonal.

marco_polo

cornbb wrote:

They still taught COBOL for certain modules at the comp sys course in UL a few years ago. It dates from 1959 according to Wikipedia :eek:

I know a guy who still programs in it for an Insurance/ Financial firm :eek: . Makes a shed load of money, not sure what his long term career prospects are like though. Although I am sure it will be around for many years yet.

In fairness to COBOL despite its uncool reputation, it was pretty good at what it was designed to do.

Farouk.Bulsara

Ruu wrote:

COBOL is still about, I don't know much about it though.

Fortran was first proposed in 1953, and is the world's first high-level language. It's still alive and well and used extensively to program math-intensive applications on supercomputers.

Fred.

Evil Phil

I see BASIC was originally designed in 1963, thats 44 years in its various flavours.

Victor

timeout wrote:

I think you have this wrong above. First time you have 130 and request 140. It refuses and adds 140 to your acccount. So now the second time you request 135 you have 270 so it should have not decline your request. In fact it should have given u 135 and left 135 in your account. Is that right or am I wrong on how I'm reading it???

I must be remembering it wrong, but you get the idea.

mwrf

marco_polo wrote:

I know a guy who still programs in it for an Insurance/ Financial firm :eek: . Makes a shed load of money, not sure what his long term career prospects are like though. Although I am sure it will be around for many years yet.

In fairness to COBOL despite its uncool reputation, it was pretty good at what it was designed to do.

I actually saw an ad looking for COBAL programmers on jobs.ie only last week

marco_polo

stebishop wrote:

I actually saw an ad looking for COBAL programmers on jobs.ie only last week

Type it in to irishjobs.ie. Loads of positions available.

Capt'n Midnight

Khannie wrote:

The space shuttles are still using 8086's. I remember hearing that NASA were trying to dig out replacement parts on ebay.

The shuttles use magnetic core memory.
Airbuses use 80186's , not even 286's. One of the problems with complex chips is you can't fully test them. Remember Intel and the pentium divide bug ? Nowhere near as bad as the i386 multiply bug that only happened when the chip got hot, but they got away with that because it was before the interweb.

Look at patents too - the IBM GIF patent expired not too long ago.

Isn't Fortran older than Cobol ?

If you treat totalisers as computers then they were running from 1913 until at least the late 80's.

mechanical tidal prediction machines were running from 1873 and were only replaced in the 1960's
http://www.math.sunysb.edu/~tony/tides/index.html

and there is the Antikythera Mechanism

Newgrange still works

Capt'n Midnight

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSIRAC - oldest electronic fifth stored program computecomputer that could be got running again, but they have the programs and manuals.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi_Automatic_Ground_Environment - front line service till 1983, code is probably still in use in SABRE

The AN/FSQ-7 is the largest computer ever built, and will likely hold that record in the future. Each machine used 55,000 vacuum tubes, about ½ acre (2,000 m²) of floor space, weighed 275 tons and used up to three megawatts of power

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z3 - replica running
Babbages Difference_engine is in the science museum and Ada Lovelace did some programming too.

Victor

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

Newgrange still works

Yeah, but the universe has gone out of sync. I think you might need some bulldozers to add a few leap seconds.

Capt'n Midnight

The OPW just haven't applied the patch yet.

mike65

If they do it'll be over-budget and An Taisce will be critical of its aesthetics

Mike

Victor

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

The OPW just haven't applied the patch yet.

I'm sure they'll get arounf to it once the find the 5.25 inch drive.

lucernarian

Ericsson's AXE telephone exchange equipment could be using programming that's at least 25 years old. I'm pretty sure that the operating systems/firmware involved have essentially stayed the same at its core.

ladybirdirl

Almost all the banks & lots of insurance companies have many AS400's, mainframes that run COBOL,JCL etc.

The cost of replacement is ENORMOUS and architects can't usually make up their mind what to replace it with;)

Also mant of the big enterprise & shiooing systems like BPCS & JDE started life in AS400 land

Having said that - my first job was an AS400 RPG programmer( and I'm not that old ) & I travelled the world with it!!!

All this C & Jave & ASP.net is for wimps I reckon

Ladybird

8k2q1gfcz9s5d4

seamus wrote:

But...but...in the movies they just write viruses, and they like infect everything, mobile phones, watches, alien spacecraft, small dogs. Computer viruses are, like, super, right?

being watching a bit too much die hard 4!!!!

aidan_walsh

Jayce Proud Mandrake wrote:

being watching a bit too much die hard 4!!!!

Pff, Die Hard 4 was positively realistic compared to some others (Independence Day, anyone).

seamus

I never thought I'd get a chance to post this

Civilian_Target

I know COBOL and FORTAN and I'm 23!

AFAIK, Space Shuttles have been updated and don't use magenetic core memory anymore, but some of the older ones do still use 8086's from way-back-when.

The oldest bit of code in the world might well be Quicksort which was written by C.A.R. Hoare in 1961, updated to cope with threading in 1974 (Hoare invented the concept of monitors and tried his own algorithm on them) and pretty much hasn't changed since (except to be rewritten in different languages).

Talisman

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

Newgrange still works

The reason it still works is because it was rebuilt in the 1960s.

democrates

I'd guess aging Russian military hardware would be up there, missile guidance or something. Maybe that fails the "still in use" criterion.

In the 1980's they had a pdp clone with a telephone billing system hand written in assembly (jrnz) :eek:. There's an old Russian saying - "when you're poor you have to think".

AlmightyCushion

aidan_walsh wrote:

Pff, Die Hard 4 was positively realistic compared to some others (Independence Day, anyone).

The core especially the scene where the super geek guy gave someone free long distance calls for live. Fúck me I nearly exploded.

Capt'n Midnight

There is a fairly old system that's been in use for ages. It generally uses RAID 1 and despite many hardware updates the keywords haven't changed much, you can usually get the code running on different systems if you try. It doesn't use flow control much relying on multiple simultaneous processing of the code, but the program controls the environment which controls the speed of processing so it's not quite the free for all you would expect.

Nucleic Acid programming is still in use today after several billion years.

dingding

democrates wrote:

I'd guess aging Russian military hardware would be up there, missile guidance or something. Maybe that fails the "still in use" criterion.

In the 1980's they had a pdp clone with a telephone billing system hand written in assembly (jrnz) :eek:. There's an old Russian saying - "when you're poor you have to think".

REminds me of the story of the americans who spent millions developing a biro that would work in zero gravity, the russians used pencils

Also when I was in NASA a couple of years ago, they space shuttle uses the original control panel from the 70's, they don't plan to update the controls for a couple of years.

AlmightyCushion

dingding wrote:

REminds me of the story of the americans who spent millions developing a biro that would work in zero gravity, the russians used pencils

I remeber that all right. Very funny.

aidan_walsh

AlmightyCushion wrote:

I remeber that all right. Very funny.

Ooh, sorry folks...