decompilation as archiving?

[Dave McGuire]

On Dec 1, 2006, at 12:26 PM, Richard wrote:
> Someone asked me in private email why I'd want to do this -- I
> consider the source code just as an important historical artifact as
> the compiled binaries and physical hardware.  For the same reason that
> people want schematics for vintage hardware, having source code for
> vintage software is also useful.

   Not only useful, but highly educational.  A lot of this sort of  
stuff was written back in the days when writing software actually  
took some *skills*.  Now any kid with a Windows box can slap together  
an application in a few hours.

   Sure, it'll eat hundreds of megabytes of RAM, be slower than  
pissing tar, and probably crash a lot, but then that seems to  
describe some of the world's most widely deployed software, so who's  
counting?

   Back in the early days of computing, some of the *smartest people  
on the planet* worked on this stuff.  Now, though, every drooling  
moron who thinks he can make more money writing Windows apps than  
flipping burgers can pirate a copy of Microsoft's Visual Whatever-it- 
is-this-week garbage and is suddenly a "programmer".

                   -Dave

-- 
Dave McGuire
Cape Coral, FL