[csw-users] Why support Solaris 8 onwards?

[Dennis Clarke]

> I think it was Joel Spolsky who pointed out that code as it gets old,
> doesn't rust. In fact, the longer it runs without incident, the more
> trusted and valued it becomes.
>
> If you want to spend your time replacing battle hardened, proven
> solutions with the shiniest new thing (in other words, fixing things
> that aren't broken) it's probably because you're too young to
> appreciate how precious a commodity time is.

I don't think anyone has accused me of being "one of the kids" in about two
decades. :-)

I recall, quie clearly, working all nighters in the military computer labs
surrounded by IBM System 360 mainframes and new Apollo DN10000 workstations.
It was great fun back then porting old COBOL and Fortran code over to ( ah
hem ) Pascal and C on the Apollo machines. There was this new thing rolled
in one day. It was a deskside clunker thing with SUN on it. No one had seen
one before but we took the panels off and looked inside and thought it was
hellish cool hardware.

It was fast. Real fast.

We loved it.

Over time I was a central decision maker that saw the removal of the IBM
Mainframes and Apollo machines. We brought in Sun. I have a twentieth year
reunion coming up next year and that computer lab is still there packed wall
to wall with Sun Starfire monsters.  I was only there for a few years after
some years in the artillery ( my hearing will never ome back ) and I am
happy that the craters I created have long since been filled and that the
Sun systems are still running strong in that Lab.

We knew when it was time to move forwards back then.

I also know it now.

Dennis Clarke