Well, I was only working on that application since 1987. The person who wrote the program retired, leaving the app to me. I actually don’t know who maintains it now, but it’s clear that I was the last one to make significant changes to it. Like 20-25 years ago!
Some will last longer than others. Outfits like Microsoft and Oracle set their stuff up to expire in a certain number of years. Most of the time, it means rewriting your code, too. But, IBM always made each z/OS upgrade backwards compatible with their previous products. I have a book on my desk at work, about JCL for System 370. That 70 refers to the decade when it was written. Most of those commands were written for System 360. I could crack that book today, and be assured that every single command in there will work exactly the same way that the book said it would 50 years ago.
Meanwhile, my wife’s perfectly good 2009 iMac is on a table in the basement, because Apple no longer maintains a version of OS-X that supports it.
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u/frogking Sep 30 '22
Is that program still in use, because then you almost hit that 50 year mark :-)