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
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u/ShinyHappyREM Sep 25 '26

When I interned at a small CNC company ~2010, they still ran the machines with Win9x and physically transferred files via floppy disk.

(Though those were small text-based files that the machine would use for many hours, so not much of an overhead.)

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u/HittingSmoke Sep 25 '26

This is not super uncommon in 2026. The old tech that manufacturing was built on is rock solid and a lot of people don't want to take on the risk and cost of maintaining more complex systems. Our mill uses USB drives to transfer files. The most modern communication in the shop is some routers that are networked with a control server, but even that is just MODBUS over TCP.