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New technology
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2023
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Haha, there's still things embedded deep in code and in CPUs that go way back to the 80s. If only y'all knew. It's all shit built on top of older shit, built on top of even older shit with kludges and hacks to glue it all together. Know why Windows has five different ways to access the same setting? Because if they get rid of the older methods, they break a ton of other shit that depends on it too. A house of cards or a Jenga tower.
A modern PC can STILL natively boot a DOS floppy from 1986 in legacy BIOS mode because of this.
Theres also examples in the corporate world where some companies are STILL running 70s mainframes, and use shiny new PCs as front end terminals that just connect to the same old backend.
This is super interesting and I had NO IDEA! Makes me very curious how much more efficient an entire fresh start might be with new tech.
Fresh starts are always tempting, but they mean throwing out a ton of babies with that bathwater. Re-making old mistakes and solving them with fresh kludges in your nice, new, clean solution.
Like everything else in engineering, it's a balancing act.