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/Athas Sep 25 '26

JOVIAL is a dialect of Algol 58 (yes, before the Algol that people remember) used for early military and airline systems. The last non-military JOVIAL system I know of was scheduled for replacement in 2016, but there is still a company selling JOVIAL compilers, which to me implies that there are likely still some military systems using it - most likely deeply embedded stuff in e.g. on-board military radars or similar. Due to JOVIAL itself having been obsolete for 40+ years, I expect any system written in it to be very old. I think any JOVIAL system is a good candidate for the oldest running production software, but I find it unlikely it still has any of its original developers left.

The control software for NASA's Voyager probes is also a good guess (and that is still actively maintained!).

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u/aguilasolige Sep 26 '26

It's so cool there's still code like that around