OT: Language for the ages

[John R. Hogerhuis]

On Fri, 2005-10-14 at 23:28 -0700, Zane H. Healy wrote:

> Actually I think having the hardware around to run it isn't simply an 
> option, it's a requirement.  Once it's certified, you can't easily 
> substitute out different hardware.

To really future-proof, it would be a good idea to find a good, portable
emulator for the processor in question and bundle it with the
application source code. 

A program typically generates many dependencies on its environment:

CPU, endianness, required CPU speed to be usable
Operating system,
Libraries,
I/O devices,
Required RAM,
Language,
Bitrot, programmer dependencies (no one else can read the code), big
paradigm shifts (IMHO one day people will find it hard to understand our
dubious flirtation with 'implementation inheritance')
etc.

You can leapfrog or at least contain all of these by having a well
written, portable emulator.

-- John.