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>I've been able to compile and run C and C++ code from 20 years ago a truly amazing number of times. It's really surprising at how easy it is to work with well written code even if it's decades old.

Not if you have used any third party libraries. Dependency management is a nightmare in these languages.

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Not if the project is written well. Yes, dependency hell is a thing, but there are ways to deal with it and make good code. Autotools will straight up tell you version x.x.x of library y is required, and as long as that's available, the problem is solved. Dependency hell is a thing in other languages too -- try to compile a really old Java project sometime.

I spend most of my time working deep in the internals of some things that are 10+ years old running even older versions of some highly (and often badly) modified linux kernels. The well written C/C++ projects definitely stand out.

Conan and vcpkg have pretty much settled that problem.

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