this post was submitted on 18 Dec 2024
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I wish more people thought this way.
No, I'm all against e-waste, but the whole "if it ain't broke" mentality is asinine, that's how we end up with bullshit like the entire financial system of the country being underpinned by an ancient mainframe program written in COBOL and is a huge reason we STILL need to wait DAYS for transactions to process because it can't handle Real-time transactions. That's the result of a generation or 2 of executives going "If iT aINt BrOKe"
Retired that shit and repurpose it to teach kids the BASICs of programming or something.
The quote should be changed to "If it ain't broke, evaluate the modern options available and determine if it will truly improve things and switch to that if so"
To me it's the tech equivalent of painting yourself into a corner, sure it works at the moment but what are the hidden costs of sticking on a dead end technology? What's the upgrade path from a C64, a C128? What happens if a chip on the circuitboard fails, or the power supply? Can't exactly order a new one, they stopped making them over 30 years ago and the company has been defunct for basically the same amount of time.
I wish I could remember more details, but I remember years ago reading about a company that had a core product that depended on an old 286 era laptop with a special software/hardware combo for maintenance, and all I could think of was that a single accidental bump of a table was all it'd take to shut down that product for months until they could find the exact replacement.
Actually c64 replacement parts are pretty affordably available these days and easily maintainable due to the comparable simplicity Vs modern computing hardware. One of the advantages of the age of hobbiest computing - the designs used widely available ICs that you can just buy and assemble on your kitchen table with a soldering iron.