591
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world 29 points 20 hours ago

I was part of a stable of about 50 programmers working for a company that manufactured lubricants circa 2000. For about a month at one point, the entire roomful of programmers spent the entire day calling into Who Wants to be a Millionaire? to try and get on the show. Absolutely nothing happened to the company -- lubricants kept getting manufactured and sent to customers on schedule. The entire operation ran on mainframe applications that dated to the 1970s. I'm not even sure what any of these programmers did other than myself, and all I did was write IE6-based web frontends that sat on top of the mainframe apps (and they're still running to this day lol, which means the mainframe apps are still in use).

[-] tetris11@feddit.uk 15 points 18 hours ago

a stable of about 50 programmers

I did not know that a group of programmers were called a stable, but it's part of my vocabulary now thank you

[-] Skullgrid@lemmy.world 8 points 14 hours ago

It's because we're studs ๐Ÿ˜

*gets message in ear*

oh, it's because we're workhorses or donkeys ๐Ÿ˜ž

[-] tetris11@feddit.uk 3 points 12 hours ago

it's because we're fussy gas bags that need constant de-farting to function

[-] Wirlocke@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 17 hours ago

Hey, they won't be getting hit with any ai slop coded vulnerabilities snuck into open source projects, so maybe if it ain't broke don't fix it?

[-] Zephyr@sh.itjust.works 11 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

Security through obscurity lol. If the code is old enough it's secure because no one is assuming it's that old. Also 50 programmers is like a lot. Ten dudes can get a billion dollar company rolling.

[-] TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 11 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

50 programmers who all knew how to write one function that none of the other ones did.

which is pretty common with legacy applications.

and moving off legacy applications you've been on for decades... takes a decade typically, sometimes longer.

this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2026
591 points (99.2% liked)

Greentext

8497 readers
959 users here now

This is a place to share greentexts and witness the confounding life of Anon. If you're new to the Greentext community, think of it as a sort of zoo with Anon as the main attraction.

Be warned:

If you find yourself getting angry (or god forbid, agreeing) with something Anon has said, you might be doing it wrong.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS