Complex software that has passed or failed the test of time?

[e100]

For me the Mosquito MQQT server on Linux and the SQLite library on Windows have both been trouble free for over a year, so I would be happy to use either in future projects.

Currently I'm looking at Node Red to see if it can be trusted to do mission critical stuff. I see various posts that cast doubt on its robustness, but there are also people who claim to never have problems. Initially I just be using it as a dash board to display diagnostic information while leaving critical code running on a microcontroller.

I've been experimenting with the Kotlin programming language on Windows/Linux as a way of migrating C++ code from a Microcontroller so I can speed up an iterative development process. Kotlin compiles to Java byte code so has all the advantages and disadvantages of the Java runtime. So far I haven't seen any negatives and the free development tools from the Jetbrains company are top notch.

What software have you used that works all the time (like it's supposed to) and what have you shelved because it didn't have the required stability?

[Doctorandus_P]

I've always been happy with my C and C++ compilers.

Years ago I was curious about python, but the python version idiocy was so ridiculous that I abandoned it.
Python 2.7 has been officially dead now for over a year and there are still projects struggling to get to Python 3 because of old libraries that have not been updated yet.

I stuck with DOS until Windoze 95, that was quite buggy but usable. Windoze 98 and 2k were very much needed bug fixes. But in later years they got absolutely bonkers with forced GUI changes and updates. I once was at a funeral gathering and halfway a presentation the Windoze pc had to reboot itself because of an update for a printer driver My brother has a big CNC Router (1500x3000mm) with Mach3. He had to press the "cancel" button every half hour during a 5 hour CNC job or his CNC machine would reboot and botch the job.

I finally ditched windoze myself when I saw a "blue tiles of death screen" at startup and no normal menu structure. Then I switched to Linux completely and never looked back.


I've bought "Ultiboard" twice (dos and windoze) and it has always been very buggy. It became so bad that after a time I did not even bother to install the new version when they send a new CD. Now for a few years I'm quite happy with KiCad.

[rstofer]

It's been a bit over 50 years but I am still using IBM 1130 Fortran.  It worked then, it works now!

Attached is a .txt file with the source for the attached plot.  The plot is sent from my FPGA implementation of the 1130 over to my LaserJet.

It's just pretty looking code.

[SilverSolder]

It's been a bit over 50 years but I am still using IBM 1130 Fortran.  It worked then, it works now!

Attached is a .txt file with the source for the attached plot.  The plot is sent from my FPGA implementation of the 1130 over to my LaserJet.

It's just pretty looking code.

Looks a little reminiscent of VB?

[SilverSolder]

There are a few open source applications I can think of that have been very stable and trustworthy for me, even running on (shock!) Windows:

Audacity (audio editor)
The Gimp (photo/graphic editor)
Inkscape (Vector editor)

All of them are relatively compact and run as portable software, and they don't suffer from needless UI changes every few years.

[rstofer]

It's been a bit over 50 years but I am still using IBM 1130 Fortran.  It worked then, it works now!

Attached is a .txt file with the source for the attached plot.  The plot is sent from my FPGA implementation of the 1130 over to my LaserJet.

It's just pretty looking code.

Looks a little reminiscent of VB?

In the early years, there wasn't a lot of difference between Fortran and Basic.  Fortran was released (commercial) in '57 and Basic in '64.  By the time I started with Fortran IV, the language was pretty complete.  At least in terms of numerical analysis.  It wasn't worth much for commercial programming and that's all I was doing (except for homework).  Fortunately, IBM came out with a Commercial Subroutines package that was more adept at formatted IO and character manipulation (strings).

I like VB.  I see it is dying on the vine and that's a shame.  It was pretty easy to design a Windows app with VB.  I haven't looked, I do hope VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) is still alive and buried behind Excel, Word and Access.  I had a lot of fun with databases and Office '97 with VBA code for the user interface (GUI).

[SilverSolder]

It's been a bit over 50 years but I am still using IBM 1130 Fortran.  It worked then, it works now!

Attached is a .txt file with the source for the attached plot.  The plot is sent from my FPGA implementation of the 1130 over to my LaserJet.

It's just pretty looking code.

Looks a little reminiscent of VB?

In the early years, there wasn't a lot of difference between Fortran and Basic.  Fortran was released (commercial) in '57 and Basic in '64.  By the time I started with Fortran IV, the language was pretty complete.  At least in terms of numerical analysis.  It wasn't worth much for commercial programming and that's all I was doing (except for homework).  Fortunately, IBM came out with a Commercial Subroutines package that was more adept at formatted IO and character manipulation (strings).

I like VB.  I see it is dying on the vine and that's a shame.  It was pretty easy to design a Windows app with VB.  I haven't looked, I do hope VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) is still alive and buried behind Excel, Word and Access.  I had a lot of fun with databases and Office '97 with VBA code for the user interface (GUI).

VBA is still alive and well.  I have only recently "discovered" it and it is amazing what you can do in there...    It would never get past security if it was launched today! 

[nigelwright7557]

MPLAB X and Microsoft Visual Studio are huge programs that will probably never be bug free.

With MPLAB  I quite often get a crash where programming using PK3 goes wrong.

VS still after all these years has problems with design view of winforms.

VS has a huge list of bugs listed online.

A lot of software suffers from the  "add bits on as required" syndrome. Where bits are just bolted on instead of changes being properly integrated.


Probably the worst software I have seen is DCC software for model railways.
It has just been bodged to do extra things making programming it very complex.
I wrote some software for an encoder and it worked great.
Turned loco around on track and it stopped working !
Required an extra stop bit in data packet to fix it.

[slugrustle]

It's been a bit over 50 years but I am still using IBM 1130 Fortran.  It worked then, it works now!
...
The plot is sent from my FPGA implementation of the 1130 over to my LaserJet.

Now this is dedication.  Have you written about your FPGA implementation of the 1130 anywhere?  I'd be interested to read about it if you have a link.

I've often thought it would be really nice to have a modern, fast computer with a simple ISA that I could program to do number crunching and graph plotting with fewer layers between my code and results.  Whenever I think about this for long enough, I land on an FPGA implementation, since that would allow it to be future proof in some sense.  Very neat to see you've done something along those lines. 

[DiTBho]

VB for Windows CE v1/MIPS
It still works, apps have never failed.

CodeWarrior for SONY/PS1, rel4: it worked then (1998), it works now!
(PentiumII@450Mhz, 64Mbyte of ram, 900Mbyte disk, WindowsNT 4.0)

[nigelwright7557]

I wont give the name of my software so as not to spam the group.
It was originally 500,000 lines of 8086 assembler in 1990.
Since then converted it to C# and its grown to about 1,000,000 lines.
I have used it for 500 projects so the bugs are mostly gone now.

Some programs are just let out and the users left to feedback the bugs.
I prefer to try to get it right first time by careful programming and testing.
Even then the occasional bug creeps in.

[MarkT]

Been editing with emacs since 1984, solid workhorse and flexibility/extensibility built in from the get-go.

[abeyer]

SQLite library on Windows

sqlite is almost a case study in how to do good software testing, so not at all surprising.

I've been experimenting with the Kotlin programming language on Windows/Linux as a way of migrating C++ code from a Microcontroller so I can speed up an iterative development process. Kotlin compiles to Java byte code so has all the advantages and disadvantages of the Java runtime. So far I haven't seen any negatives and the free development tools from the Jetbrains company are top notch.

I haven't done much kotlin, but I'm not sure it's what I'd look to for microcontroller code. 
That said the jetbrains tools are all nice (and worth paying for the commercial ones, too... they have a pretty good discount rate if you buy them as an individual, and they include a perpetual licence if you don't want to keep the subscription going.)

[abeyer]

CodeWarrior for SONY/PS1, rel4: it worked then (1998), it works now!

CodeWarrior was so nice for its time, and totally does still hold its own today. Sunk a fair bit of summer job money into keeping it updated when I was a student.

[nigelwright7557]

Worst program is Windows (any version)
Trying to add a device to the network means setting things all over the place.
It should be just a single dialogue to set it all up.
Windows explorer file copy is very slow despite the onset of fast SSD's.
I find Windows a bit unresponsive at time having to hit a button/link twice to get it to work.
Thats for starters.