This is totally me just being naive, I don’t work in the software realm but do have an interest possibly one day, but if we have stuff that’s been able to run (seemingly) successfully for years, or maybe even decade, what maintenance needs to even be done on old programs? Is this simply for people discovering security vulnerabilities and patching them? Is there more to it than that?
In: Technology
1) someone finds a security vulnerability. That needs to be fixed.
2) An update to an operating system, change in the way certain drivers work, or something else breaks the software. That needs to be fixed
3) Something you didn’t think of or account for breaks something a requires a change. Early programs assumed the processor on a computer would be consistent and when run on a faster processor, they went too fast and possibly made some things not wait long enough before going to the next step. Y2K was a problem because people didn’t think their program would be used 10 years later without an update so to save RAM they saved the year as 89 instead of 1989… that needed to be fixed.
4) Compatibility with new devices and protocols. You can write a program to read RAW files off of cameras, except RAW is not a format and every single camera model has the data formatted a little differently. Not every manufacturer, every camera model… so anytime a company comes out with a new camera, a program that reads RAW files has to be updated with the ability to read the new camera… that needs to be fixed.
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