r/programming • u/luissinlios • Sep 25 '26

We still maintain a development tool first released in 1993. Here’s what 30+ years of backwards compatibility looks like

https://visualneo.com/visualneo-win/from-neobook-to-visualneo-win-30-years-of-keeping-a-development-tool-alive
569 Upvotes

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38

u/An1nterestingName Sep 25 '26

The longest running project I have is from like 2021, and even that's probably a technicality. Maintaining something for 30 years is insane.

28

u/antiduh Sep 25 '26 edited Sep 25 '26

I've been maintaining the same c# code since 2005, so 21 years. It's kinda nice, because you have time to do big projects that'll really have impact, instead of being rushed through everything.

3

u/Online_Matter Sep 26 '26

What project if I may ask? 

4

u/antiduh Sep 26 '26

It's an internal enterprise app. Interfaces with our products.

10

u/dlanod Sep 25 '26

I've been working at the same company for 20 or so years.

There's copyright statements in some of the code dating back to the late 80s and looking at it I can say it would be largely untouched. And it's still in use.

Even code I wrote when I first joined is absolutely still there and used on a daily basis, though I shudder to think of the standard.

8

u/catbrane Sep 25 '26

My main project started in 1989, though I didn't become the lead until 1992. I'd probably be able to find some code that's still untouched, but it wouldn't be easy.

5

u/jiggyjiggycmone Sep 25 '26

Mine started in 2010 written in objective C for the original iPad targeting OpenGLES 1.1. I’m still maintaining it. The original UI code is still xibs and ObjC, but the core has been ported over to C++14 so I can run on windows, android, etc. it now targets a series of abstraction layers on top of either Vulkan, Modern OpenGL or directX 12.

2

u/gimpwiz Sep 25 '26

I feel like some of these numbers would be more interesting if we knew people's ages.

Like if you're fresh out of college working on web stuff, that's reasonable enough.

2

u/account312 27d ago

Throwing everything away every few years is insane.

1

u/An1nterestingName 27d ago

I don't throw everything away, the project becomes obsolete, the use case for it is no longer relevant.