On Oct 20, 2013, at 4:41 PM, Johannes Trimmel <[email protected]> wrote: > The reason for legacy code it most often, that there are not the resources > and the manpower available to write it new. You could get such a situation, > if you want to run some computer controlled alien hardware from a human > computer.
That or the only people who understood how it worked were laid off or quit. I would expect a fair amount of legacy software would also exist in shops still interfacing to old hardware. If they have hardware based on QBus or MultiBus I for instance, they might not have an 'adequate' development environment. No IDE or GUI, so current generation developers are not sure how to change the code. Could even be that the old tool chain requires a system they don't have anymore such as VMS. > An other possiblity is, that you want to use alien software libraries, > because they are better somehow, then what we have. All we need for that is > either a compiler for alien software and a way to make interfaces between > alien and our software, or a way to translate alien computer language into > one of our own. Or it is easier to figure out how to interface to their software than it is to directly control the hardware, especially if we are not sure exactly how said hardware works. > I don't see that as a big problem, once we have enough basic understanding of > their computer science. > > An interesting matter would be how much we trust the software. If we find > archeological evidence, that the aliens have throughly tested the function, > is that good enough, or do humans need to do their own tests? Many humans would want to do some of their own testing. Think of it like a used car. Even with full service records, there are going to be people who take it to a trusted mechanic to check it over. -Bret_______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
