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Comment by killjoywashere | Hacker News Reader

I feel like there was a batch of big software from the 90s and early 2000s that took a really long time to die, and they're not necessarily dead yet: Windows XP. Java. Python 2. IPv4. X11. Free/Open/NetBSD (1). Hell, I was using (adding new data to) a MUMPS-based system on OpenVMS until 2018. But I feel like we are seeing fewer new widely-publicized death marches now, despite many more projects starting. What changed in the community?

What lesson was learned? It seems like a weird corollary of the Streisand Effect: if you announce something's EOL, you'll get more clingy users that keep the product out of the grave, creating a drag on maintenance budgets, but, maybe, if you just stop maintaining and walk away, dependent users will either notice and switch away, or die themselves, and the death will ultimately be quicker and quieter.

(1) As an example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26168596

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(1) As an example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26168596

LOL that's an ancient bit of copy pasta. Here's a page from over two decades ago that was already describing it as a "classic troll".

https://everything2.com/title/BSD+is+dying

Sorry but this is an ill informed comment. Most of the stuff you are talking about is not bad, just legacy. And what are you saying about java? How is that bad?

Also poeple dont like to change shit that runs well, thats why we have so much legacy stuff around.

In the real world, it doesnt matter if your whole damn business is still running their warehouse system on a DOS program running in a god damn DOS emulator on a Win xp VM running on some linux box. What matters is that it works.

I have a friend that I have been migrating his XP VM to new laptops for the last 13 years. XP was the last version of windows that would run his invoicing software and launching a VM is less painful for him than purchasing/learning/configuring new software. He is in his 60s now and close to retirement so for the cost of beer and pizza he has managed to avoid a huge headache.

> software from the 90s and early 2000s that took a really long time to die (...) Free/Open/NetBSD

In case you're not trolling: FreeBSD optimizations used by Netflix to serve video at 800Gb/s [pdf][1]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33449297

> (1) As an example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26168596

Usenet activity is a very odd measure of deadness to use today.

Although maybe that is exactly what you mean: that the BSDs were already dying in the Usenet era and are still not dead? I think even if they were dying back then, over the course of the past 20 years they may have found their niches to heal and survive in.

MUMPS... arrrrggghhhh.... instant outbreak of skin rash and stress just from hearing the name. Thank you. ;)

Seriously though, that was one interesting language, the number of weird features (the editor is a string) that you'll come across in MUMPS make it fascinating just to study and wonder what inputs into the decision making process around the design trade offs were.

Java?

Java is live and well, still one of the most popular languages today.

> IPv4. X11

Those are from the 1980s.

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