[HN Gopher] Oldest software system in continuous use ___________________________________________________________________ Oldest software system in continuous use Author : ZeljkoS Score : 152 points Date : 2022-11-25 12:14 UTC (10 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.guinnessworldrecords.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.guinnessworldrecords.com) | [deleted] | [deleted] | nuc1e0n wrote: | "this code is specific to the System/360 Architecture, and so | cannot be run on anything other than an IBM mainframe." This is | not true. Emulators are pretty effective and can have passthoughs | to new capabilities. Like the ability to play gameboy link cable | games over the internet for example | retrac wrote: | There's a very complete System/360 through modern zSeries | emulator [1] [2] that runs basically every IBM mainframe OS. | IBM does not license their recent operating systems or | languages to run on it. Though you can of course run Linux, or | older versions of MVS or VM. Lack of OS and tool licensing is a | showstopper for many users who might otherwise transition away | from IBM hardware through emulation. | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hercules_(emulator) | | [2] https://sdl-hercules-390.github.io/html/ | the_only_law wrote: | Doesn't z/Arch natively support S/360 binaries as well. | nuc1e0n wrote: | Are modern versions of IBM systems even popular compared to | Linux? The reason these systems still exist is because they | use legacy versions of software that could be covered by | emulation. Any migration whatsoever would be contingent on | the cost. | jazzyjackson wrote: | I'm sure z/OS is not nearly as popular as linux servers but | there is a niche market for what it provides, just because | it is old does not mean it is inferior. | Exendroinient00 wrote: | Last people managing this kind of old legacy software will | inevitably die. The Young generation probably won't replace the | entire industry, and from that point onward we would have a | pretty massive rot and the forgotten knowledge rippling through | the entire society. | jackmott wrote: | danpalmer wrote: | Some of the modernisation efforts for these sorts of systems are | fascinating. | | The US DOD have built a COBOL to Java transpiler that emits | nearly-idiomatic Java. As far as I can remember they expect it to | essentially be reviewed like any other Java contribution from an | engineer and receive minor tweaks, and they're expecting to | translate millions of lines of code with it. | | There's also MicroFocus, a company who build JVM COBOL, with all | of the implementation/CPU specific bugs, so that you can move | everything on to JVM (or maybe even CLR I think?) and then start | replacing pieces with Java/C#. | | It's not unreasonable for a company or organisation around since | the 60s to have this sort of stuff around, however with all the | modern options available today, it's pretty unreasonable for them | to not have a convincing modernisation plan. | galangalalgol wrote: | Are there any reasonably fast emulator for the system 360? It | seems like ridding yourself of vendor lock would be goal one. | Then add an interface wrapper that logs inputs and outputs for | several years to build validation tests for any ports or | upgrades. | | It seems like a truly insane effort to port 20e6 lines of | assembly and expect to get identical behavior. I doubt the | current behavior is even fully documented. Ensuring identical | outputs for a _lot_ of recorded data seems at least slightly | more valid than trying to go back to documentation or | requirements. | | Perhaps the simplest way to migrate the IRS code is to make the | laws simple enough you don't need 20e6 lines of assembly to | implement it anymore? | pdntspa wrote: | Provided the 360 CPU is well-enough documented, I don't see | the problem here? | agentbellnorm wrote: | With enough saved input/output data, maybe some parts could | even be replaced by a ml model? | | Not 100% serious but then again seems like serious resources | are put into this problem, so maybe worth a try | kadoban wrote: | An AI-aided translation might make more sense, since at | least you could review that for correctness and it'd likely | be easier+cheaper to run the result. | jmartrican wrote: | I wonder if an AI system for the IRS would use double | float or big decimal types to do its math. | ThinkBeat wrote: | > The US DOD have built a COBOL to Java transpile | | I think it would be a hard challenge to create such a beast, | But did they also have to create a huge framework around it so | that the Java could could interact with the same environment as | the COBOL code? | | That seems like a hard challenge as well. | YetAnotherNick wrote: | I would say it is Jacquard's Loom which uses punched card | programs to weave patterns. It was invented 200 years back[0] and | I could find one video about 100 year old machine used | commercially[1]. | | [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQzpLLhN0fY | | [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5uX143hx38 | Step888 wrote: | I would say that RNA is a lot older than Jacquard's Loom. | | And it is still actively used. | anonymouskimmer wrote: | Biology isn't software. I say this as a biologist. | | Software like things can be done with it, but this is no | different than treating a bunch of pipes, valves, and a water | source as a computer. (Edit to add: Which would make our | sewers the oldest hardware system. And I'm sure there are | supercentenarians still pumping software through those | systems.) | | I imagine that many physicists feel about physics envy the | same way I feel about imagining biology as software. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physics_envy | | Maybe someday we'll have a grand unified theory of everything | imaginable and real. But even then distinctions should be | made between levels of emergent phenomena. A habitable | environment allows biology to exist. Biology allows | intelligent beings to exist. Intelligent beings create tools | that allow them to make even more tools that do predictable, | or otherwise defined, sequences based on various inputs. | Hardware is two levels above biology, and software is a level | above that. | psychoslave wrote: | >Hardware is two levels above biology, and software is a | level above that. | | From a conceptual point of view that can be grabbed by some | human mind, this all make perfect sense. | | However, these hierarchies tell more about our way to | handle sensedata than it reveals of the actual structure of | the universe, if this does match anything relevant past our | thoughts. | anonymouskimmer wrote: | I'm not normally a hierarchical or categorical thinker, | though I do like thinking of things as built up from | other things. | | It's important to recognize what thinking modality is | best fit for a particular idea. You could instead | describe this as a line of entropy. A pre-requisite | chain. A web of interconnections. Whatever. And certainly | it's grossly simplistic to describe it the way I did as | being "two levels above", when these levels are based | only on ad hoc categorical conveniences. | | I agree with you. My describing it this way was a matter | of convenience to describe an underlying truth of | required precursors. When we have Von Neumann machines | capable of evolving their code the link between software | and the DNA/RNA system will be a better analogy than it | is now. But an analogy is not an equivalence. | rdlw wrote: | Are the same patterns punched into the cards as 100 years ago? | This record is about software. | JoeAltmaier wrote: | Some nonsense about having to run old assembler on IBM hardware. | There are simulators these days, which would run many times | faster on modern hardware. | pbhjpbhj wrote: | This is downvoted, is it wrong? It would be very surprising to | me if it weren't emulated. | layer8 wrote: | There might be licensing issues, see | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33744285. | jazzyjackson wrote: | I don't know, but just because it can be emulated does not | mean it is equivalent. I have a friend who uses DOS software | on his modern laptop and laments that it was faster running | natively on a 486. | DrBazza wrote: | There I was thinking my 90s code at Megabank that's still running | was an achievement. Fwiw it was and still is a simple time series | db. | jeffrallen wrote: | Why can't they just.. nah, I'll stop there. :) | jamal-kumar wrote: | Oh wow, I was clicking this link wondering if it was going to be | exactly this. Karsten Nohl has a great CCC talk all about this | [1] (I'll just copy their explanation of the talk) | | Becoming a secret travel agent. | | Travel booking systems are among the oldest global IT | infrastructures, and have changed surprisingly little since the | 80s. The personal information contained in these systems is hence | not well secured by today's standards. This talk shows real-world | hacking risks from tracking travelers to stealing flights. | | Airline reservation systems grew from mainframes with green- | screen terminals to modern-looking XML/SOAP APIs to access those | same mainframes. | | The systems lack central concepts of IT security, in particular | good authentication and proper access control. | | We show how these weaknesses translate into disclosure of | traveler's personal information and would allow several forms of | fraud and theft, if left unfixed. | | [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjRkpQever4 | earksiinni wrote: | If you could pick any language to migrate these programs to, | which one would you pick and why? | | I've never used Java professionally, but that's probably what I'd | pick. Seems to hit the sweet spot between time-tested, widely- | used, enterprise-proven, performant, future-proof/portable, and | well-understood. Seems from another comment that's what US DOD is | betting on, as well. | ben_roeder wrote: | This is a great talk on it | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_t41xvPp1w from systems we love | bumby wrote: | Makes me think of the Ship of Theseus.[1] How many changes can | you make to legacy code and still consider it "legacy"? | | [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus | Mountain_Skies wrote: | Even if you replace every board in the ship, it's still | constrained by its original design. These software systems | could be similar in that even if every line of code were | replaced, architectural patterns, file formats, etc. that were | created for the original system will continue to influence the | current design. | bumby wrote: | > _Even if you replace every board in the ship, it 's still | constrained by its original design._ | | Is it though? Or are you assuming it has to be replaced life- | for-like? If so, why don't we apply the same to software? I | don't think that constraint is a given with hardware. Is a | remodeled house constrained by it's original design? It seems | to come down to how much you want to invest in "refactoring" | the old house. | | Your comment made me think of the evolution of the F/A-18. | The new variants are utterly different than their original, | yet are still technically the same airframe. | 3-cheese-sundae wrote: | In many places, infinitely many; legacy is just a convenient | word meaning "we know it's old and bad, but we're keeping it." | chinabot wrote: | And its worked for 60 years. I would take that over anything | else. | wildzzz wrote: | Legacy doesn't always mean bad. It may have an older | architecture or have some constraints that aren't always a | problem. I work a few different product designs but they | almost all come from a legacy product. It's not a bad legacy | design, it does what it's supposed to within the environment | it was designed for. Customers still buy the legacy design. | It's cheaper and doesn't have the flexibility or add-on | features of the newer designs so if they don't want them or | can't use them, they'll buy the legacy product. | bumby wrote: | > _"we know it's old..."_ | | I think the point I was trying to make is if a substantial | amount has been changed, on what basis is it still considered | "old"? | | If every plank and nail of the ship is replaced during it's | voyage, is it still the same "old" ship that disembarked? | jll29 wrote: | Philosophical Gedankenspiele aside, there are differences | between a ship and software. I can best speak to the | software side, as I'm not a man of the sea. For once, a | ship has to carry its own weight, so you cannot without | limit load more and more onto it, or replace parts by | heavier parts. With software "evolving" (rather poor but | common terminology, I know) in tandem with new hardware, on | the other hand, programmers get more space and faster | processing every year, so they are less constrained and can | postpone radical but scary/risky refactoring. There is no | force to radically take out old code, you can comment out a | bit here and there and add lots of new fixes and | extensions, increasing complexity and technical debt every | year, every decade. The OP also mentioned underfunding of | the organization, typically the budgets only permit small | incremental changes to "keep the ship running": there is no | possibility to start a fresh/modern implementation with a | separate team in parallel due to the mind-boggling cost. | | It would be interesting to run a diff of snapshots of any | software in 1960 and its 2060 version, if e.g. SABRE or the | IRS system may last that long. | [deleted] | ChrisMarshallNY wrote: | Early in my career, I was offered a job, writing a word processor | system in IBM 360 Assembler. | | I'm fairly glad I declined. | pjmlp wrote: | It is more fun than dealing with AT&T x86 Assembly. | the_only_law wrote: | Shit I'd be willing to work in mainframe assembler. Not like my | career was going anywhere anyway, but most mainframe jobs | either want established domain experts (people who have been | there for decades and are intimately familiar with all the | common mainframe technologies) or new grads they can underpay. | ChrisMarshallNY wrote: | I suspect I was the latter, but I had already had quite a bit | of experience with machine code and assembly (8085, 6800, | 6502), by then. | jaqalopes wrote: | For those viewing the comments before the article, be advised | that it is not the case--as my not-yet-awake brain first thought | on parsing this headline--that the software system belonging to | the Guinness World Records is the oldest in continuous use. | ska wrote: | >For those viewing the comments before the article | | ... any confusion is obviously your own fault | ZeljkoS wrote: | The wiki history of SABRE is an interesting read: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabre_(travel_reservation_syst... | | There is also an entry on IRS Individual Master File, but is | short on information: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individual_Master_File | deepspace wrote: | That brings back memories. In the late 90s, I travelled a lot, | and managed to get an "Eaasy SABRE" account, which allowed me | to book flights essentially like a travel agent, with a UI only | slightly better than the one they used. | | I remember spending whole evenings piecing together flights for | a round-the-world trip at lowest cost. There was little or no | error checking. I once almost booked a flight to Sydney, Nova | Scotia, instead of the one down under. | | Then, tragically, Travelocity shut down the service, leaving | their crappy web-based frontend as the only online booking | option until ITA came along. | jazzyjackson wrote: | wow, sounds neat. how was payment handled for booking? | deepspace wrote: | IIRC, the service cost a small monthly fee, so you had to | have a credit card on file with them. It may have been | possible to just charge the booking fees to that credit | card. However, I seem to recall there being a payment | dialog at the end of the process, where you were prompted | to enter a credit card number for payment. | dmitrygr wrote: | I am willing to rewrite ALL the irs software in a language of | their choice in return for ability to add a few lines of my own | logic for when MY taxes are being processed. IRS, call me ;) | komali2 wrote: | I'm skeptical because Guinness World Records is a marketing | agency masquerading as a ratings house / record keeper. | | I googled "oldest software still in use" and the rest of the | internet think it's MOCAS, the USA DOD contract management | software, launched in 1958, two years earlier than Guinness' | earliest guess for either of its options mentioned in the | article: https://fossbytes.com/mocas-worlds-oldest-computer- | program/ | | Sorry to be "that guy" but I'm just really cynical about Guinness | and records in general. Plenty of their records really are just | fun, and I can't find a profit angle for this article for either | the IRS or whoever manages SABRE, so I guess I'm just being a | snark. | kwertyoowiyop wrote: | Agreed. I would trust them regarding the world's largest | burrito or sourest lemon, but not this. | NikolaNovak wrote: | Generally I feel the "Guinness World Records" is "valuable" in | that "somebody somewhere put _some_ level of thought and rigour | into some record I would never have even realized existed ". | | Not an absolute definitive agency, and when there EXISTS a more | official agency, take those; but it's a fun read of "these are | reasonably close to the extreme in this obscure area I never | thought of" | jdsully wrote: | It was invented by a beer company to help settle debates in a | pub. Guinness records are just a fun thing to appreciate even | if not perfect. | nemomarx wrote: | It could be PR for the IRS? A bit of public attention to make a | play for funding to replace or upgrade this system, etc? | 0xcde4c3db wrote: | > Guinness World Records is a marketing agency masquerading as | a ratings house / record keeper | | In case this is news to anybody, the basic shape of the grift | is that while anyone can theoretically apply for a record and | submit proof, the requirements are fairly stringent and | complex. And wouldn't you know it, Guinness World Records | offers various levels of "consulting" on setting/breaking a | record, including defining the record to break, setting up an | event, and flying out an adjudicator to witness the record | being broken. | charcircuit wrote: | To clarify, by defining a record to break that includes | making up new categories so that you automatically get the | world record by being the only competitor. There are also | records like "First Rubik's Cube", which are impossible to | beat. | lioeters wrote: | I for one appreciate your "but actually" comment, the | relentless pursuit of facts over fluff. | | As an aside, I always thought "snark" was a real word, but | apparently it's a neologism meaning "snide or sarcastic | remark". It's also the name of various fictional creatures, | including The Hunting of the Snark by Lewis Carroll, as well as | in A Song of Ice and Fire. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snark | Terretta wrote: | You're right to be cynical. | | I have had 'continuously running' software system in house as | old as they reference. From first hand experience, I'd imagine | it's not something folks are crowing about. | | Your reference is older than what I had in house. | johnklos wrote: | It's funny how if you ask people about forward-looking systems | today, they have either learned mistruths or haven't learned | enough about the history of computing to picture much that's | reasonable. | | "Java!" used to be talked about as a good way to create software | that you could run in the future, but anyone who has had to keep | around old laptops / old VMs to run ancient Java to handle KVMs | or device management tools knows how ridiculous an expectation | about the stability of Java can be. | | "Windows!" is funny, because I can't tell you the number of | places that have an ancient Windows PC that has either been | repaired or carefully replaced with new enough, yet old enough | hardware to still run Windows 2000 or XP, because copy protection | is stupid, and / or because drivers for specific hardware can't | be updated or run on newer Windows, and / or because the software | can't be compiled and run on newer Windows without tons of work. | | On the other hand, you can take large, complicated programs from | the 1980s written in C and compile them on a modern Unix computer | without issues, even when the modern computer is running | architectures which hadn't even been dreamt of when the software | was written... | xboxnolifes wrote: | Windows is a particularly funny one, considering how quick the | advice for most issues turns to doing a fresh install. It's a | very brittle black box once you try to do any amount of changes | from default settings. | brazzy wrote: | > "Java!" used to be talked about as a good way to create | software that you could run in the future, but anyone who has | had to keep around old laptops / old VMs to run ancient Java to | handle KVMs or device management tools knows how ridiculous an | expectation about the stability of Java can be. | | Hard disagree. In my 20 years of experience, Java is very, | very, _extremely_ stable and backwards-compatible. | | I would absolutely expect Java bytecode compiled in 1996 on | Java 1.1 to have a very good chance to run without errors on a | brand new Java 20 JVM, and source code from that time to | compile with some very minor adjustments such as changing | identifiers that clash with newly introduced keywords. | Ironically, the older the code, the less likely it is to have | problems with the post-Java 8 breaking changes. | | But you talk about "handling KVMs or device management tools" - | that's hardware stuff not covered by Java's standard API, so it | will involve native code. _That_ will bring you compatibility | problems, not Java. Admittedly, that could be seen as Java | avoiding the hard problems rather than solving them. | | > On the other hand, you can take large, complicated programs | from the 1980s written in C and compile them on a modern Unix | computer without issues, even when the modern computer is | running architectures which hadn't even been dreamt of when the | software was written... | | I want some of what you're smoking. Toy programs, sure. But | nothing that does any kind of hardware interfacing (notice a | theme?) or uses any but the most trivial syscalls (this would | be pre POSIX), or makes any of a myriad common assumptions | about hardware architecture (see | https://catb.org/jargon/html/V/vaxocentrism.html). So how many | large, complicated programs does that really leave? | johnklos wrote: | Good point about Java, even though talking to KVMs over the | network and displaying a GUI isn't really hardware stuff. | | But I think you're forgetting how much code is written to | C89. How much of bash, for instance, is ancient, with updates | that avoid newer toolchain features so that it can be as | portable as possible? | | Yes, people don't often write stuff with portability as a | goal at the beginning, but once something is relatively | portable, it stays that way. Lots of code that wasn't poorly | written made it from all-the-world's-a-VAX to i386, from i386 | to amd64, and now ARM and aarch64, with a minimum of extra | effort. There just had to be a little effort to NOT program | like a jerk, which, as funny as it is, is still an issue now. | | I'm running Pine as my daily email program, which was written | in 1989 and hasn't had any real updates since 2005. New | architecture? Compile it. Lots of modern software started out | as C software from the 1980s. | choeger wrote: | I think we simply underestimate the cost of software maintenance | because we ignore software maintenance. | | Migration to a new language is nothing but an extreme form of | maintenance. And it's not even _that_ expensive. We 're just used | to scales of a dozen or so programmers at best. | | As a very conservative estimate, translation from assembly to, | say, Java, should proceed at the pace of maybe 100 lines per day | on average. So a team of 100 developers would need a year or so | to translate a 20M lines application. Of course, there's also the | effort to create tooling and the framework of the new | application, but it's certainly doable. | rippercushions wrote: | Sabre announced a 10-year deal with Google to migrate to the | cloud. Coming soon, containerized microservices running | System/360 assembler? | | https://www.sabre.com/insights/releases/sabre-forges-10-year... | wbl wrote: | Wasn't that just system 360? It had a fairly high level of | isolation between services possible. | kmeisthax wrote: | It seems we've come... full circle. | genmud wrote: | Yea, it was pretty dope for its time. | chasd00 wrote: | Isn't that tide prediction analog computer implemented with ropes | and pulleys and invented before electricity still running in some | places? | ben_w wrote: | While that might count as "a computer", it definitely doesn't | count as "software". | tomohawk wrote: | > the low level of funding the IRS has had for modernization | | The IRS has been trying to modernize for decades. | | Here's something from way back in the Clinton admin: | | https://clintonwhitehouse4.archives.gov/pcscb/rmo_irs.html | | But you'll never hear anyone there actually be responsible for | the failures. They'll always whine about needing even more money. | johnklos wrote: | The failures are due to the fact that the people who can get | contracts don't have good programmers, and the people who have | good programmers can't get contracts. | yesiamyourdad wrote: | I worked at AA/Sabre in the mid 90s, straight out of college, | although I was working on the PC side on the software they put in | travel agencies. I left just after AA spun Sabre off into a | separate public company. The mainframe software was done in TPF | (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transaction_Processing_Facilit...) | and I believe to this day a large part of it still is. IBM | created a C compiler some time in the late 90s and this was | considered a major advance for the platform. I believe that the | system still runs on TPF with some parts written in C. Those | programming jobs were not typical CS grads, most people simply | had a HS degree or some college that could pass a logic test, the | company had to provide their own training because there was no | other way to gain experience with that environment. | | On the subject of emulation, Sabre also had acquired a company | called Agency Data Systems which was written for a Data General | minicomputer using a language developed in-house. The guy who | invented the language was named Hugh, so internally this was | called "HUBOL" (the actual name was something else that only Hugh | actually could remember). Some time in the 80s they decided to | port it to a PC architecture but instead of porting ADS to a more | modern language, they decided to build a DG emulator to run on a | PC. When I was there, they were still updating the HUBOL source | code (Y2K was a big deal at the time, plus with changes in the | travel business, the updates were constant) but running on the | homegrown DG emulator on a MS-DOS system. Hugh was quite a | character. Back then we still had to wear a shirt and tie to work | and Hugh's shirts all had these breast pockets that were stuffed | with odd slips of paper. The joke was that he had run every | project he'd worked on in the previous 30 years out of his shirt | pocket, given the way things operated, there was probably some | truth to that. | | Somebody linked to Adam Fletcher's talk. Adam co-founded ITA | which was eventually acquired by Google and probably is the basis | for Google Flights. I saw a demo in probably early 1997 when they | came around the startup I worked at looking for customers. Their | software was written in Lisp and ran on a PC and was completely | jaw-dropping. I never realized how bad Sabre's pricing software | was until I saw what they were doing. ITA absolutely was the best | pricing engine around at the time. In retrospect I probably | should have quit my job and begged those guys to hire me. | bdcravens wrote: | I worked in their HR department in 2000 and 2001, building | various systems to support compensation, performance review, | etc. Significant part of the role involved working with DBAs | who pulled data from those systems into our RDBMS, as we were | using web languages of the day. | eep_social wrote: | > Adam co-founded ITA which was eventually acquired by Google | and probably is the basis for Google Flights | | This is an absolutely wild pair of claims. Adam was nothing | like (and does not claim to be) a co-founder and google flights | is driven entirely by ITAs QPX product. ITA was a very good | place to work. | p_l wrote: | It's possible that the reason there was no C for TPF is similar | to why C arrived very, very late to CICS on S/390 (or z | architecture). | | Namely, C standard library was not reentrant safe, with | considerable global variables et al - and the code on CICS (and | I suspect TPF) had to be fully reentrant because it effectively | ran inside green threads. | | So, unless IBM wanted to advertise C that wouldn't contain | standard standard library, modules written in C would be | possibly dangerously playing with global side effects. | Relatively recently this was solved by common runtime component | whose name eludes me at this time, which underlies standard run | times for C/C++ and I think Java, at least inside CICS | chx wrote: | There was a protocol document which showed at least the data | structures of the original IBM 7074 survive. I wouldn't be | surprised at all if some of the machine code would survive as | well, emulated easily. | jedberg wrote: | Imagine congress passed a law funding software upgrades for the | IRS that came along with a bunch of tax code changes to | "streamline" the upgrade process. | nonrandomstring wrote: | > As much as 20 million lines of the IMF's code is reportedly | written in Assembler - a major obstacle to any modernization | | That's literally jobs for life for some (un)lucky team. | dhosek wrote: | Oh man, I can remember product owners asking for something that | wasn't what they really wanted because they thought what they | wanted would be hard to implement, but of course what they | really wanted was easier to do than what they asked for. | NikolaNovak wrote: | This happens all the time. | | A decade ago, a family friend with a band wanted help with | burning their CDs. | | Timidly, "hat in hand, eyes down", they asked if I could | maybe, possibly, add 2 seconds of silence in front of their | recorded tracks? It's OK if I couldn't, they'd understand. | | "I finished it while we were talking" | | "Really?? Amazing!! That's awesome! Didn't know you could do | that!! | | Now, can you also remove John's guitar from this song?" | | They really had no clue that removing an instrument from a | finished mix is _HARD_ , as opposed to adding 2 seconds of | silence (and for context this was years before the current | deluge of "AI Powered" apps that might conceivably actually | do that). | increscent wrote: | Reminds me of this: https://xkcd.com/1425/ ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-11-25 23:00 UTC)