Pivoting

[Ian Bruene]

On 04/20/2017 04:57 PM, Hal Murray wrote:
> What's a reasonable life of a program like ntpd? [...]

Allow me to reproduce a lesson I learned the other day:

19:14 <ianbruene> One should always put a multiplier on one's estimate of
                   how long their code will be in use: code expected to 
last
                   for 5 years lasting 20 got us Y2K. Code expected to last
                   for 50 years had better be happy running on a vital
                   server in the Forgotten Closet of Doom for the next 150
                   years.

Code randomly breaking for unforeseeable reasons is one thing; that is 
what continuing support and
maintenance is for. But designing the software to break horribly after a 
couple decades for perfectly
foreseeable reasons isn't going to cut it, not when dealing with core 
infrastructure.

As Achim Gratz pointed out, there are still *PDP8s* running around.

-- 
In the end; what separates a Man, from a Slave? Money? Power?
No. A Man Chooses, a Slave Obeys. -- Andrew Ryan