What technologies are you using even though they are embarassingly out of date?What old technology that should have been replaced long ago do you still use regularly, and why?
Visual SourceSafe, true devil incarnate:
alt text http://www.planetperplex.com/img/visual_sourcesafe.jpg [1]
[1] http://www.planetperplex.com/img/visual_sourcesafe.jpgInternet Explorer 6. Our corporate standard !!??
cmd.exe - Quite possibly the worst command-line interface out there, but it's available on every Windows machine.
Notepad...
\WINDOWS, \WINDOWS\system32 and \WINDOWS\system32\dllcache all at once. Windows will prompt you for your installation CD so it can restore it, but you can cancel it. Then just rename Notepad2.exe to Notepad.exe and place it in all aforementioned locations. - Samir Talwar
Windows batch files.
I use them because they're extremely easy to deploy, even though the language is embarrassingly awful.
Visual Basic [1] 6.0. Not really obsolete, but embarrassingly horrible.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Basic
PVCS [1], the Polytron Version Control System. Over 20 years old and barely changed in that time. It's actually older than CVS.
But we're on version 6.7.11, which was updated only 8 years ago, and even comes with a Java 1.3.0 GUI client!
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PVCSHTML tables.
I just really don't care what it looks like if I'm the only person that needs to look at it.
Windows XP
Paper, especially for typography proofing: an LCD just can't compete with that kind of DPI and contrast.
I find myself using Microsoft Calculator [1], even if I'm working in Excel!
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculator_(Windows)Minesweeper.
My Iomega ZIP drive with 100 MB disks...
I think because of some twisted psychological romantic flaw in me.
Classic ASP...I itch uncontrollably and start to shake every time I have to maintain one of those pages rather than rewriting it in ASP.NET!
We have 3K+ pages just sitting out there right now.
ACCEPTED]
RCS [1]. Before I check in changes to a "RCS like" repository, I email the whole group with the list of files I modified and see if anyone is also checking in the same files today so we don't overwrite each other's changes. Don't laugh... this isn't funny if you have to do it everyday :..(
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revision_Control_SystemHTML and CSS.
They are defective by design. So many years have gone by and the committee responsible for their development hasn't done their job to fix and improve them.
Requirements of these days stretched HTML/CSS far over their limits. And there are still no alternatives.
The old unreliable floppy disk.
alt text http://cws.gtc.edu/departments/Library/Library%20Technology%20Tips%20webpage/floppy.jpg [1]
[1] http://cws.gtc.edu/departments/Library/Library%20Technology%20Tips%20webpage/floppy.jpgPen and paper.
It isn't because computer interfaces aren't good enough (though that's an important consideration). The main reason is that it just seems more human. Another reason is that, while they have their own failings, pen and paper can't be hacked, can't crash, and remove that dangerous temptation to get the computer to help you out.
I still have a VCR in my living room (although I don't use it much these days).
Visual C++ [1] 6.0 compilers!
Many people on SO really wondered [2] about this.
Reason for not replacing-- Hmmm... I have not spoken to my manager yet!
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_C%2B%2B8051 microcontrollers. They date from the late 70's or early 80's but are now just so cheap and available plus I have so many pre-written libraries for them it would be daft to use any other micro for low end jobs.
QWERTY.
It should have been replaced long, long ago... the reason I still use it is obvious...
Funnily enough I'm typing this answer in Dvorak because I accidentally switched to Dvorak mode a few minutes ago.
My mouse. It should have been replaced by a Minority-Report-Fullbody-ShufflOMatic long ago.
Delphi [1] 6.
Because Borland/Inprise/CodeGear/WhateverItsCalledNow thoroughly lost its way after Delphi 7 and I was only upgrading on the alternative releases. I did buy Delphi 2005 but never upgraded anything to it as the hassle was simply not worth the effort (so what a waste of GBP [2] 300 that was). I still have several Win32 programs for clients in Delphi 6 and apart from a certain aging of the interface they work as well as they ever did.
IMHO Delphi is still the best native Win32 environment out there. Blindingly fast compiler, properly structured language and does 99.8% of everything you can do in C++ without all the development overheads of that.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CodeGear_Delphiwin32.hlp
Around 2000, I was using a TRS-80 Model 4P (an ancient Z80A system with floppy drives, expandable to a whopping 128K of memory, which was addressable by bank switching, IIRC) in a vital role in Unix development.
Specifically, I put it in front of the outlet so I wouldn't knock the plug for the Unix system out of the wall when I stretched my feet. It worked very well.
Borland C++ 3.1
;)
Visual InterDev 6.0, talking via FrontPage extensions to Visual SourceSafe.
It is so hunkered that if any of the config breaks, we're not sure that we can put it back together again...
Lotus Notes. :-(
Visual FoxPro [1] 9.0.
I'm disappointed it still exists. Foxpro 9.0 runs on Windows 7! It will never die like Visual Basic 6.0 is still alive.
http://www.nubscc.com/images/vfp9.jpg
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_FoxProMy car has a diesel drinking internal combustion engine [1] with pistons driving a crankshaft. Pretty much a slightly modified version of what the first cars used in the 1890's or something.
Oh, and in the toilet we have one of those incandescent light bulbs [2] with a bayonet fitting.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_combustion_engineObjective-C. Wow, it's like going back in time 15 years after using C#/.NET.
Predating digital computers:
Time measured in hours, minutes and seconds. Having a base 2-12-60(-60) system might have been nice when we had to convert by hand (divisible by 2,3,4,(5,),6(,10) is useful), but not any more when we use computers to calculate.
At that, the decimal system. Why not switch to binary (or hexadecimal, that's the same)!
As an astronomer: the magnitude system. The brightest star visible by the human eye gets 'magnitude 1', the second brightest '2' all the way to magnitude 6. This happens to be a base 2.5 scale in luminosity. Base 2.5!
We should discard all these millennia old technologies and reinvent them as if we did not know how we originally did it.
Edlin [1] .. I have a DOS 3.3 box that is (still running) a dial-up bulletin board system.
We're not even going to get into the compiler.
If confronted with this later, I will deny it and claim my Google OpenID was compromised.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EdlinWindows 2000 and lots of Windows batch files.
Oh, and Internet Explorer 6.
The Lynx [1] browser. Good for testing the text flow of web pages, and also good for testing site-usability for impaired people.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynx_(web_browser)Paint. It still does only what I really need from a graphics program and no more.
Paper for UI prototyping. It really works surprisingly well!
By definition, anything still being used is not obsolete, but in terms of deprecated processes, we still have some Windows/DOS batch files knocking around - they still work and we don't have the time or inclination to rebuild them solely to have a newer technology achieve exactly the same result.
XML [1]. This technology is over-engineered. It's too verbose. It's led to numerous unnecessary standards and specifications that waste thousands of man-hours everyday (e.g. WS-*). Out-dated? If not now, it will be soon.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMLBorland (Turbo) Pascal 3.02
Windows Me [1]! The power of being above awful limits! With the perfect blue on my screen!
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Me3.5" floppy disks...
I used one the other day when I needed to run a bootable memory test on a computer.
ASP ..we have 150+ applications and 30,000+ webpages in the intranet using ASP ;-(
The application works fine... So what is the need for upgrade -> Business
vi (well, gvim). But only because nobody seems to have been able to come up with something more decent.
Visual Basic 3.0. It works surprising well in Windows XP, but not in Windows Vista.
alt text http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/4655/visualio3.jpg [1]
[1] http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/4655/visualio3.jpgUnix desk calculator: dc [1]. It is very helpful for arithmetic operations in Bourne shell (sh, not bash) scripts.
Unix editor: ed [2]. Helpful for editing in place when your flavour of sed [3] doesn't have the adequate option. Helpful also on very dumb terminals which do not even have an ESC key.
Postscript, because it is easier than PDF to programmatically generate or to edit with a text editor.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dc_(computer_program)Java 1.4 and WL 8.1.5, also we have just been warned that SVN is forbidden and we will need to migrate back to VSS. Lovely don't you think?
Edit: to clarify I work as a service provider, I work for a public institution implementing several community requirements. Though I do agree that what they are paying me is hardly enough to endure all this crap....
We still manage our bug reports in a homegrown database written in dBase [1] IV.
And I couldn't live without batch files in Windows (effectively being DOS-BatchFiles).
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DBaseThe C++ << operator for output.
Midnight Commander.
Microsoft Access 2000. Fortunately soon partly to be replaced by ASP.NET ;)
SMTP. Of course I don't have much choice if I want to send emails, do I? But come on, a standard that uses a goddamn 7-bit character set?
And it wouldn't be far-fetched to add IRC (the RFC doesn't even bother to specify an encoding!) or HTML to the list.
Java 1.1 to support the Microsoft JVM, for those 40% or so of our customers who refuse to upgrade.
Batch files, many Unix tools, CGI.
SSI: Server-side includes. They are a universal (at least on Apache) templating system, are remarkably fast, and there's a work-around for not being able to natively create arrays. Return JSON objects/arrays as a string, and let the client do the work.
Borland Kylix.
Badly implemented and now unsupported.
I work on a web site on which Kylix has been used to build a bunch of libraries that are called from a scripting language. A bit like a web site running PHP calling its C libraries - only is a proprietary scripting language and Kylix libs.
Cobol... Though some at my office might say it'll never be obsolete.
Centura Team Developer 1.5.1, circa 1998, which was never officially supported on Windows XP and uses 16-bit ODBC to talk to SQL Server 2008. It's a testament to Microsoft's backward compatibility efforts that it runs at all on Vista 32-bit.
HD-DVD player. can't afford a blu-ray now. but upscaling on regular dvd's works great. And I do have 10 HD-DVD titles.
Java webapps still in Model 1 architecture.
For the uninformed, that means I have a lot of servlets with boatloads of "out.println" calls to generate the HTML.
Surprised nobody said this already...
Tcl
Our entire testing automation infrastructure is built on Tcl. Tons and tons of libraries, scripts, etc. would all need to be converted if we moved to another language. We're starting to dart our eyes towards Perl, but quickly refocus on Tcl since it's what we have.
Oh, if only we could use a modern scripting language like Python or Ruby. Big corporations move slowly.
Visual Studio 1.0
I use fetchmail, [1] postfix, [2] procmail [3] and mutt [4] for my email. Until just a few years ago I used to use elm [5]. I have something like 1 GB of Unix mailbox files going back around 15 years and have not gotten around to migrating them.
This is a legacy system that dates from my days of dial-up Internet connectivity and I have been procrastinating about migrating it for five years or so. This has been a bit of a PITA [6] since around 2004 when HTML formatted email got very popular all of sudden. Being text-based, elm and mutt don't really do a good job of handling it.
[1] http://fetchmail.berlios.deGah.
Visual Basic 6.0. Complete with purchased controls that we don't have the disk for anymore, and whose company has been out of business for years. We have two old applications that are still in production, which I refuse to update at all. If we ever lose this one box that the components are installed on, we are probably screwed.
Lotus Domino R5. My first foray into programming. We build dozens of applications on this platform, and have spent millions trying to get off of it. There are still a dozen or so applications in use.
Microsoft Visual SourceSafe (VSS). We have an OLD version of VSS, which I am working on replacing currently.
Old Java executable JARS. We have a smattering of scheduled tasks that point to old Java JARS, which require long deprecated versions of the platform.
That is all I can think of at the moment.
PowerBuilder 6.5, Sybase Adaptive Server Anywhere 9, Visual Basic 6.0 , Visual C++ 6.0, Windows batch files (much of my build process depends on them), ArrayList in C#.
I'm with Artelius. Pen/Pencil & Paper. Sometimes its far easier and faster to get an idea down on paper. Then, if you have to make it pretty, you can redo it on the computer. Very often I sketch out relationships and structure before I begin to code.
vi .. and its derivatives Vim and gvim ..
Solaris.
It doesn't matter what version it is, it's all horrible. And the Solaris servers we have here are completely borked installations, so you can just imagine how much fun I have day to day here.
I have an old ENIAC at home that I haven't had a chance to take to Goodwill. I still use it as a highly effective paperweight though.
I'm surprised, and a bit jealous:
Paint Shop Pro 7
I'm now using it on Linux! The two main features I like:
Line drawing tool: it's the quickest, easiest-to-use one I've ever used. No other program I've tried does this well. Version 8 of PSP changed it to work like Flash/Photoshop where you have to use paths.
Edge preserving smooth: incredible for smoothing out cartoony images. If you have a JPEG image it will essentially remove the artifacts from it. Never found another tool like it.
Apache Axis [1] 1. It is full of bugs and really limited.
It is deprecated by Axis2, which has only the name in common with Axis1 : total API rewrite. I gave up the migration after 3 weeks of tears.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_AxisWe're still using the DB-Library API [1] to communicate with a Microsoft SQL Server [2] 2000 database ...
[1] http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa174484(SQL.80,printer).aspxThe good old pencil!
Classic ASP & Visual Basic 6.0.
We don't seem to get the budget or time to migrate fast enough...
Office 2000 and Visual Basic 6.0.
Windows Vista
Wait - what?
We have existing servers running on WebLogic 4.5 (not even the last service patch either) and Java 1.1.7. The PAIN!
Turbo C/C++, from Borland.
17 years old and hopelessly standards non-compliant, but I'm using it because my school forces me to.
I have a really really old calculator sitting on my desk. It has the roll of paper and everything. Very useful.
My mega drive with sonic !
I'm not sure that it "should have been replaced", but I still have my working copy of Brief [1] (the DOS editor) and still us it quite regularly.
Note - I'm referring to the version produced by Underware (the original maker), and NOT the P.O.S. version that Borland put after buying them up - prior to killing it.
I spent a lot of time in the mid-80's learning the macro language, and made a lot of really useful macros for it - and still use many of them today under Windows XP (in the command window).
-R
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brief_(text_editor)AppleWorks 6.0 on System 7 [1], inside the Basilisk II Macintosh emulator on my Linux laptop.
Beats OpenOffice at speed, reliability, and pretty much everything else.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_7Delphi 4. Our software still uses it, and it's too much work to retool it in anything else.
It makes you appreciate what you have nowadays. Probably the only thing worse would be older versions of Borland C++ builder, a horrible amalgamation of Delphi and C++.
Flatfile EDI.
eg:
UNB+UNOA:2+AAA+BBBB+080319:1152+111'
The Shipping Industry is still thinking about using XML. Thinking veeeeery slowly.
Comment on VBScript post above ... (new here, can't comment yet) and the general (ongoing) sorry state of scripting on Windows.
For my occasional scripting needs, I use VBScript, and it is absolutely obsolete. It can't natively communicate with newish .NET stuff without a COM layer - and we fled to .NET to avoid COM. However, like batch files and rain on Saturdays, it's always there. I also use a lot of batch files and, strangely, enjoy it much more than VBScript.
A batch file knows it's obsolete, and revels in it. Batch transcends obsolete to venerability.
PowerShell [1] is theoretically a replacement. All the technical pieces are in place, it's fast and potent ... but few people can stand looking at it long enough to learn it. ("-gt", what were they thinking?).
JScript 8 could be a replacement, but someone forgot that scripting languages ought to be dynamic - Jscript 8 needs compilation as far as I can see.
I'm pushing my team / company to embrace IronPython and DLR in general. You can get your old COM, your newish WMI, your .NET, and get the immediate gratification that "scripting" should provide. I want to script IronPython, moving anything heavy off to C# libs. That's the dream ... the reality is that I know everyone can use JScript / VBScript / batch out of the box. Makes a guy want to switch to Unix.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_PowerShellVisual Basic 6.0 and PowerBuilder 10.
Still using Fortran 77, and not just running legacy code, but implementing new features. Recently, I integrated with some auto-generated code from MATLAB/Simulink. Many people in the scientific computing realms still use old, but fast languages.
Microsoft SQL Server [1] 2000, though we are slowly migrating to 2005...
Until early last year our Java source was running against JDK 1.3, but I got us up to 1.6.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_SQL_ServerHyperCard and Macintosh System 6.
C89 [1]. I'm sure if I look for it, I'll find some awful K&R crawling horror lurking somewhere in this pile. Better not go there.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C89_(C_version)REXX [1]. I still use it for small text parsing tasks. I have yet to find a replacement for the extremely powerful stem variables in any other language.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REXXVisual Basic 6!
Slackware Linux [1]. The whole distribution fits on a single floppy.
I built a home automation system years ago. The computer is a 66 MHz 486DX2 PC with 16 MB of memory. It comes with some special hardware so it's too much trouble to upgrade. Tried new Linux distributions but the machine is not powerful enough to run any of them.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SlackwareAML [1]
and ArcIMS [3].
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARC_Macro_LanguageCOBOL, CICS, and ADABASE :D
Yes, some people still have to program in COBOL
Silicon - I mean it's so 1955!
At my previous job, we still used visual studio 2003 / .Net 1.1
FoxPro 2.6 for DOS for one old and large program complex. It's laughable, but it's true. We have no time to reconstruct it using new technologies. Even more laughable fact is that often I wonder at speed of FoxPro, especially in comparison with modern "multitier" systems :)
Visual Basic 6.0, Visual C++ 6.0, MUMPS [1] and last but not least Java.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUMPS_(software)Everywhere I go I seem to be maintaining an old Access-VBA application that has been upsized to Microsoft SQL Server [1].
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_SQL_Server4GL [1]...
We're in an ongoing never ending process to get it all into C#.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4GLC#. It's like going back in time 15 years after using Lisp [1]/ SLIME [2].
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp_(programming_language)VBScript [1] - I should be using PowerShell instead right?
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VBScriptIBM OS/2 version 1.3
All of our report summaries and charts are produced using Excel VBA. The reason is because our reports were really crappy, and I wanted to make them better and I didn't know how to write code. So I just started googling VBA code and making reports. Now most of our reports for customers are coming from me.
I myself have always been using the newest technologies as far as I remember, but it was quite a shock when I started working in this "new" company:
Borland C++ 5/6, Visual C++ 6, and most likely some even older ones to follow. Also, applications have to support Windows 98/2000... and no plans to upgrade whatsoever.
Luckily I can use even older Vim [1] to do the actual coding part.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vim_(text_editor)Sybase's APT Workbench - a ncurses-like text based user interface to databases ;-)
Buckle spring keyboard.
Yes, the machine gun keyboard from IBM. Bought a new one with USB connector and additional keys. Love it. Every single keystroke is a tiny pleasure.
A bank card without a chip. And even if you have one with a chip, nobody have the device to read it.
Hummingbird DM 5.1.0.5 which is I believe at least 5 years old now and should be replaced. This is used for holding support documents and legal documents which has to connect to our new CMS. There is an old COM DLL that is used to handle logging in to Hummingbird as well as getting out the data which can include information about the files as well as the binary data itself.
MCMS 2002 which is our old CMS that is being replaced soon. The company just had other things that took the spotlight so the new CMS project has had its schedule revised at least a few times and there has been a couple rounds of training with only a few people getting it twice. Since this has some of the data from the sites we are replacing, there has been work to get an extraction from it done which can be painful.
Both of these are on Windows 2000 servers that are a few years old and can be a bit fussy to use at times.
I know some companies which are still using Microsoft Access 97 for their applications. (But they are planning to upgrade to Access 2003 - :-) )
Access 97. And all the VBA that goes with it.
At work, not my fault :)
And sometimes, even... shudder - paper.
Microsoft Axapta 3. It is painful.
MS Access 97! Damn, after several years moved to linux word, I have to go back to this ancient technology in order to maintain an application I made for my uncle during college time :(
A von Neumann machine. You too.
File server databases. I use a number of them (Access, R:Base, DBISAM (Delphi)).
SourceGear Vault 3.51. We just haven't had time to re-evaulate our source control.
Frontpage 2003. It does the job.
still use pen and paper to trace outputs of certain algorithms
Microsoft Windows
We still have to use CVS [1] at work and there seem to be no plans to upgrade at least to SVN. I find it a hellspawn in combination with NetBeans.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concurrent_Versions_SystemI am wondering why noone writes LaTeX, TeX, TeTeX or any of the other variants of this excellent but ancient layout engine :)
I always found it to be the absolutely best tool when you had to make a long text with consistent layout. Even on 2 pages of word/openoffice always messes things up for me, and I spent 10 times as long fiddling with things that doesn't look nice.
and... once it dies, we will revive it. Once revived it will become the wolf of the future. So sorry MS.
MCMS 2002 [1]! We have over a dozen websites running on this platform.
SharePoint has improved over the years, but for simple internet publishing requirements, MCMS does the job.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MCMS
