decompilation as archiving?

[Tony Duell]

> 
> 
> In article <m1Gqe60-000Iz0C at p850ug1>,
>     ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell)  writes:
> 
> > [...] I like scheamtics of old 
> > computers for 2 reasons, firstly to learn how they worked, and secondly 
> > to be able to repair them if something failes. Only the first is really 
> > applicable to software, software doesn't fail in the same sense that 
> > hardware can.
> 
> It fails in the same sense that a hardware design bug would be sitting
> there permanently annoying you until you fixed it.  Machines tend not
> to ship with hardware bugs because they typically aren't useful with
> hardware bugs.  They do however ship with lots of software bugs, even
> on older machines.

True. That's why I said 'in the same sense'. It's quite possible for 
hardware to have worked perfectly for 20 years, and then to stop working 
(and not work agian until it's repaired) because some component has 
failed. I think it's very unlikely for software to work fine for 20 
years, then crash and not run again because of some latent design bug 
(unless said software makes use of the real time/date, of course ;-))

-tony