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Ask HN: What's the oldest piece of software still in use?

55 points by jgrahamc ↗ HN
I use a 13 year old copy of Quicken for bank account management. I'm interested in examples of software that are older than that and still being used.

I'm not interested in software that's been patched over the years, but code that's been unchanged for years and is still in active use. Are you using any DOS programs, for example?

84 comments

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buro9
WinAmp 2, which I believe is from 1998/1999.

I have a zip of the download, and just keep installing it and moving forward. I never quite made the jump to Winamp 3 and once I stopped moving forward every update to Winamp deterred me some more.

JanezStupar
Try Foobar2000.
buro9
I have.

Over the years I have tried everything, but I like WinAmp 2.

WinAmp 2 just works great. It's no nonsense and I love the quick find (CTRL+J) on the library... search file name, path, and metadata. Which is how I need search to work, based on my file conventions as well as the metadata.

oakwhiz
Don't older versions of Winamp contain security vulnerabilities?
stevekinney
For a lot of people in non-technical professions it might actually be Windows XP.

That is, of course, if we're putting aside some of the basic UNIX tools that probably haven't changed since the 1970s—which I think is fair.

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chewxy
I believe that honour goes to dc (if you're in linux, you can still use dc).
pdw
In Linux, "dc" will be GNU dc, which would have been written late 80s or early 90s, like most other GNU utilities. And it would have been maintained/modified over the years.

(A better example would be the bsdgames collection. It's a lot older and has barely been touched over the years.)

killercup
Nice find! Man page footer on current OS X says 1997-03-25.

I looked at some other man pages from ls, cat, tar and the like and the oldest that I found was rm, from January 28, 1999.

UPDATE! rmdir's man page is from May 31, 1993! Though I'm sure the actual code was updated since then.

Peroni
Does my copy of Asteroids for the Atari 2600 count? It's been locked up in storage in my mothers attic for about 15 years and the last time I was back home it still worked perfectly. I believe the game is close to 30 years old.
Nursie
Ask a mainframe shop. The back-compat date for mainframes, even just-off-the-line System Z boxes, is 1964.

--edit-- I also play Commodore 64 games in emulators, and they date from the 80s, but I suspect this is not the sort of answer you're looking for.

mathgorges
I'm doing an internship at a mainframe shop right now.

I took a look into it and the oldest macro I could find that I use semi regularly is SYS1.MACLIB(DCBD). A utility for working with data control blocks which dates back to 1977, putting it at 36 years old.

There are definitely older programs on the system, but I'm not sure how often they're used.

kephra
I wrote a set of Nagios plugins for z/Linux in 2008, to monitor a DOS/VS application, running under VM/370 running under VM/ESA, running in an LPAR next to the z/Linux.

I don't know how old the application is, but DOS/VS is from 1972, and depreciated since 1980 by DOS/VSE.

Nursie
Heh, so you were my competition!

It must have been about '08 when I did some work porting parts of Tivoli's event monitoring stuff to z/Linux.

anywherenotes
I made a website that's by now obsolete for anyone but me, but I still use it. It went live in late 2002 and hasn't been patched since early/mid 2003. This year 1and1 (my host) disabled MYSQL 4, so I moved database to MYSQL 5, but did not change the code. I have grandiose hopes to update it to look current.

Although now that I look at it, they say my version of php will be phased out August 1'st :( And they are raising the price on August 1'st ...

emhart
Link to the site before time runs out? I love seeing "antique" websites.
trin_
just a heads-up for you. 1&1 will disable php4 too this year! ;)
anywherenotes
Yea, that's tomorrow actually according to email I got from them. I'll see what that means when it happens, I'm the only user, and if I have to recode it, I will. I didn't keep up-to date on PHP, but it seems PHP5 is mostly backwards compatible.
derefr
The "running unpatched" part would make me bet on embedded software. Maybe some machine in a factory still usefully following a 50-year-old punch-card to "print out" patterned carpets, for example.
noonespecial
We use DOS programs within virtual machines to process data that comes in on 1/2" tape from government sources and return it to them on DVD's. The oldest of these would be mid 80's I guess.

Edit: Changed "in-virtuo" to "within virtual machines" for clarity.

kephra
PC-DOS or DOS/VS? (Intel or /360 architecture DOS)
noonespecial
PC-dos.

The programs convert the ebcdic files on tape to ascii and then build a cheesy search index for other DOS based programs. It takes 2 different virtual machines, two different dos releases and 4 different programs to get it done.

The whole process is an exercise in Seuss-ian ridiculousness.

shubb
The science lot usually call simulation 'In silico' in their papers. Personally, unnecessary latin makes me cringe.
noonespecial
You're probably right. I can still edit, I'll change for clarity.
zarify
I was doing some work for a friend of mine late last year and he was still running his DOS-based accounting software from 1987 I think. I can't remember the name of it though. He wouldn't abandon it, so now that he has a new computer he's running it in a VM, including a virtual parallel printer since it wouldn't recognise his new one.

I still tease him about it.

TomT
I know of a Government organisation still using 25 year old software running on VAX/VMS ! Hardware support is the main reason they are getting rid of it !
Piskvorrr
Prehistorik 2 (1993) even displays a notice on startup "wow, this game still runs in 2013", blisfully unaware that it's inside DosBox on an Android tablet.

So indeed, the oldest software will probably be running inside a VM.

RBerenguel
Titus the Fox also does this (1992 by the same developers IIRC)
senthilnayagam
Foxpro/Clipper Apps running on DOS , there are couple of shops using them still in India
edw519
I wrote the lot traceability module of Compufact's ERP package in 1987. 3 years ago, I engaged a company that still used that software. Just for fun, I searched for my initials in their repository. Good news: that software was still being used. Not so good news: one of my programs had been changed 120 times, including bug fixes. I pretended that it was written by another "edw".
yaddayadda
So over 26 years, there have been 120 edits? Including bug fixes? Which means not all 120 edits were bug fixes, presumably it included other things like feature enhancements? That's less than 5 changes a year on average for a 26 year old program. In my book, unless you're working on a life-or-death system or a space-bound system [1], less than 5 changes a year over 26 years is something to be proud of!

[1] And no one individual programmer should be solely responsible for life-or-death systems or space-bound systems.

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protomyth
When I use Windows, I tend to use PFE as a text editor.
spydum
I also used to be an avid PFE32 user, but I finally gave in to Notepad++, and have not regretted it.. you may want to check it out!
protomyth
Thanks for the suggestion. I don't really use Windows anymore, but will keep it in mind. I do wish I could find a simple text editor with PFE32 like macro record and templates for OS X.
wtvanhest
This isn't the oldest, but is definitely one of the oldest softwares that is used at almost every restaurant in the US and maybe other countries as well.

Aloha Restaurant POS

Watch this youtube video, then watch what servers use at your favorite restaurants.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlXCfs75SkI

I used it back in 1998 at a restaurant and it felt old then. Still used at almost every bar, restaurant I go to.

incision
The oldest stuff I've seen in use would be PDP-11s, Wangs, NetWare 3.x and assorted OS/2 Win 3.1 desktops.

I used 90s versions of Winamp and Xnews until I just stopped caring up local MP3s and USENET.

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rjohnk
WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS. Why? Because it rocks.
jonnathanson
Let's define "still in use," because that's the heart of the question. Technically speaking, I'm sure someone could dig an Apple IIc out of storage somewhere and successfully run a game on it. Hell, someone out there might be doing that right now. To me, that anecdotal experience doesn't translate into "in use."

I'd define "in use" to mean still in productive service to a group of people or institutions significant enough to represent a niche market.

For that, I'd probably look to things like avionics software in certain airplanes, navigation systems on old ships, firmware in medical devices and diagnostics, or perhaps to inventory management systems in old warehouses.

And who knows what firmware we loaded onto our Cold War-era ICBMs, for that matter? Or what dusty, backwards-compatible systems we would need to maintain control over them? Would anyone like to play a game? :)

tjr
Similarly: I worked on some avionics networking software a few years back, written in C, and a surprisingly old version of GCC (I think from the late 1990's, in 2006-2007, so approximately a decade old then) was being used. That particular version had already been qualified for avionics development at the company, and to upgrade to a newer version would have meant assuming the cost of requalification.

Just so long as the old compiler worked well enough, they had no reason to upgrade. (I did uncover a bug in the compiler which I had to work around, but wasn't enough to warrant an upgrade.)

ioquatix
Compilers are pretty interesting- the current compiler was compiled by the previous compiler. Theoretically, our modern compilers embody ~40 years of history..
jeremymcanally
There is an accountant at a company I briefly worked for who still uses an Apple II and some archaic accounting software that he learned to do accounting on. He refuses to change, so they just have a big stack of Apple IIs in a closet to replace them when they wear out. That software probably hasn't been touched since 1980 at the latest.
ewams
Can we get a picture of that?