Re: There's legacy, and there's legacy
Did I get downvoted for not including a link to the Telegraph article, or for some other unstated reason?
Anyway, here's the link, let's see if the El Reg revamp makes plaintext clickable if it's a URL:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/aviation/11291495/UK-flights-chaos-Air-traffic-control-computers-using-software-from-the-1960s.html [edit: apparently no autoclickability. Someone else's software is seriously outdated :(]
Extract:
"A consultant who has worked for Nats said it knew its software needed to be replaced a decade ago but will be relying on the 1960s programmes for another two years.
Martyn Thomas, Visiting Professor of Software Engineering at the University of Oxford, said: “The National Airspace System that performs flight data processing was originally written for American airspace in the late 1960s.
“It wasn’t designed to cope with the volume of air traffic we have today, or to interface with modern computer software.”
Prof Thomas said the NAS system was written using a now defunct computer language called Jovial, meaning Nats has to train programmers in Jovial just to maintain the antiquated software."
[continues]