boblq wrote:
This is for Stewart's benefit.
So he can laugh at me. Well again.
I offered to do some prototype work for a friend
and colleague. He want some XML to native data
format conversion for an application he has. I said
sounds good to me. I needed the money anyway so
I was ready to roll. Begging consultants don't always
get to pick and choose and the end of the year is
always a hard time so now is the time to get the
gigs going.
So he sends me the code.
He wrote this stuff in Fortran over 25 years ago. It has
been tested and audited and through all kinds of expensive
QC programs that insure it produces correct output ...
this makes it "sacred" code. They only audit and test the
results though. We are not talking about looking at the
code. So a gazillion dollars has been spent to make sure
this code generates correct results. Nothing has really been
spent on code maintenance.
Along the way it has been from Fortran through RATFOR,
and then through a RATFOR to C convertor, which emulates
Fortran IO using curses, a subsystem that I have always
thought was aptly named.
All of this for what is a command line interpreter. The underlying
data structures are UDP packets with the packet contents
containing both data and operators on that data. It has its
own virtual memory manager built in. It is sort of a packet based
distributed computing system.
There is just one small problem ... The C code compiles but
no longer runs. Somewhere along the way a short while back
the code broke and no one can fix it. Audits galore they have
but no real backups. He,he. It is only 40,000 lines but has over 800
gotos as a result of the way the converter deals with various
Fortran constructs.
There is essentially no documentation except the code.
So I need to get it running.
I really don't know WTF it does. It did some kind of economic
calculations for the Norweian government not so long ago.
The core engine is/was capable of all kinds of things.
One of the reasons I got involved was because the guy who
first wrote it is very bright and I was intrigued to see what
a packet based distributed computing system might look like.
You would have to see this code to believe just how bad
it can get. There is nothing quite like a code translator to
give you (lots of) code that is damn near impossible to
read.
I won't go further but I wanted Stewart to know that sometimes
even a prototyper like me gets hoisted on his own petard and
must face the demons of maintenance.
So it goes,
BobLQ
Oh yeh, I almost forgot, the user commands and responses
are in Norwegian, not my best language ;( But hey, that is
only about thirty words how hard can that be.
good story!
BTW..
I can put you in touch with a local Norwegian EE who could probably
verify your translations/interpretations of the commands or other such
stuff you run across.
And also (just curious): are you going to do some heavy duty xslt
processing to deal with the xml-to-X work?
..jim.
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