I remember back in the day that there were companies still running DOS software on MS-DOS decades after it had been replaced by standalone Windows (i.e. the one that didn’t need DOS under it, like NT and newer).
And it was always the same reason: it works fine for us.
Not a criticism: I’ve tended to work in the forefront of Tech and got two lessons from that in this regard:
Latest is seldom Greatest. Some of it might become Greatest (after it matures enough and the kinks have been worked out, so thank you all early adopters for enduring all that), but a lot is just New, not even overall better and even superior stuff might end up as hit&miss as it doesn’t get adopted widelly enough and just fizzles out. Being an early adopter is almost never worth it IMHO.
If it works, don’t replace it without any actual concrete need now or foreseen in the near future. For tech “old” is just another word for “it has reliably worked for many years” (hence why it’s still around) and going for “new” only for its newness is not really a logical engineering choice. Absolutelly, “it needs frequent maintenance or updates and we are having trouble finding the people or the parts to do it” is a valid “need”, “there are other newer devices to do the same” is not.
I suppose that because of it being something I do professionally I end up doing engineering choices informed by that for my personal tech, rather than take the consumerist fad-following upgrade path.
The only issue with your second point is that it can eventually become a quagmire when you do need to upgrade it.
I work for a very old company who held to that philosophy for many years. And while any individual component could be looked at and seen as running fine, when they did finally decide it was time to upgrade they were faced with needing to upgrade everything simultaneously.
All of the tech was too old, so no current tech had the sort of backwards compatible bridge that helps you move forward. It’s like figuring out how to get your telegram system to also work on your WiFi network, nobody makes any interfaces for that.
Instead of slowly and gradually replacing components over time, they’re faced with a single major overhaul that’s put the entire company at risk because they have to completely shut down for over a month.
I had a high school comp sci teacher who basically worked part time for fun. His main source of income was royalties from some DOS software he wrote like 20+ years before that a large number of companies still used. Always thought was interesting.
I remember back in the day that there were companies still running DOS software on MS-DOS decades after it had been replaced by standalone Windows (i.e. the one that didn’t need DOS under it, like NT and newer).
And it was always the same reason: it works fine for us.
Not a criticism: I’ve tended to work in the forefront of Tech and got two lessons from that in this regard:
I suppose that because of it being something I do professionally I end up doing engineering choices informed by that for my personal tech, rather than take the consumerist fad-following upgrade path.
The only issue with your second point is that it can eventually become a quagmire when you do need to upgrade it.
I work for a very old company who held to that philosophy for many years. And while any individual component could be looked at and seen as running fine, when they did finally decide it was time to upgrade they were faced with needing to upgrade everything simultaneously.
All of the tech was too old, so no current tech had the sort of backwards compatible bridge that helps you move forward. It’s like figuring out how to get your telegram system to also work on your WiFi network, nobody makes any interfaces for that.
Instead of slowly and gradually replacing components over time, they’re faced with a single major overhaul that’s put the entire company at risk because they have to completely shut down for over a month.
I had a high school comp sci teacher who basically worked part time for fun. His main source of income was royalties from some DOS software he wrote like 20+ years before that a large number of companies still used. Always thought was interesting.