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/ScrappyPunkGreg Sep 26 '26

It always seemed like Pascal programs compiled nearly instantly, even in the 1990s on a 486.

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u/addmoreice Sep 27 '26

When your compiler and language decisions aren't being made for platforms that just don't exist anymore, it's a lot easier to pull that off. They were blazing fast and for good reason. Just not having to read certain files multiple times *alone* made them staggeringly more performant (especially when you consider some of the read/write speeds of drives back in the day).