Post ATZ6m9dOvUJSn41GsK by bradanlane@mastodon.social
 (DIR) More posts by bradanlane@mastodon.social
 (DIR) Post #ATU3gezw8KyWfjRv16 by aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place
       2023-03-10T20:19:53Z
       
       6 likes, 6 repeats
       
       I love the term "software archaeology" because it implies the existence of subfields such as "software experimental archaeology" (attempting to reconstruct and demonstrate how people once built software) and "software paleoethnobotany" (quantifying what botanicals were culturally significant to software and the broader historic implications to the societies that wrote it), but also the existence of the broader field "software anthropology" and its offshoot "software sociology", and
       
 (DIR) Post #ATU3gfZO0XKcRg2EGu by jbowen@mast.hpc.social
       2023-03-10T20:23:53Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @aeva I'm going to have to try to work "software paleoethnobotany" into more conversations.
       
 (DIR) Post #ATU3ggBJjVfmLJmWOW by mansr@society.oftrolls.com
       2023-03-10T20:36:18Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @jbowen @aeva Instead of "what were they smoking" say "this requires a software paleoethnobotanical investigation."
       
 (DIR) Post #ATUYso7J9WSF0YAYeu by federico3@mastodon.social
       2023-03-10T20:44:58Z
       
       1 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @aeva Software archaeology could be a pretty real subset of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_archaeology
       
 (DIR) Post #ATUYtSSd9fHI8GS9Ro by grumpasaurus@fosstodon.org
       2023-03-10T20:22:48Z
       
       1 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @aeva aren't we all software coroners and pathologists
       
 (DIR) Post #ATVKC9sj9RZfrG4vXU by aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place
       2023-03-10T21:14:07Z
       
       2 likes, 0 repeats
       
       You might say to yourself "Aeva, there's no such thing as Software Paleoethnobotany that's absurd", but some day a thousand years from now someone is going to be tasked with analyzing the remains of a surprisingly well preserved set of backup disks for an ancient industrial automation system to reconstruct the lost recipe for brewing the legendary "miller high life"
       
 (DIR) Post #ATVKFYL0gEyaZmvTmK by greenfox@mastodon.gamedev.place
       2023-03-10T20:37:51Z
       
       1 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @aeva In my current project, I often use the term Git Archaeology. Which I think applies here.- "git experimental archaeology" What problem was this commit intended to solve?- "git anthropology" What was the culture and pressures that created these design decisions?- "git paleoethnobotany" WTF WERE THEY ON!?
       
 (DIR) Post #ATX2ai2SOlgJsw6fC4 by textfiles@digipres.club
       2023-03-12T07:06:41Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @aeva accurate
       
 (DIR) Post #ATZ6XvWqZf08zKAaCu by mrcopilot@mstdn.social
       2023-03-10T21:28:47Z
       
       1 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @aeva Talk about job security, That poor tech will never believe they got it right and ancient people purposefully consumed the vile liquid results.
       
 (DIR) Post #ATZ6Y1iPZZoiAvcu48 by vortex_egg@ioc.exchange
       2023-03-10T20:37:04Z
       
       1 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @aeva As a person who has done a lot of software archeology in past jobs, I can definitively tell you that "software pseudoarcheology" is also alive and well in organizations.
       
 (DIR) Post #ATZ6gwGtBNNtti0ERU by izaya@social.shadowkat.net
       2023-03-13T07:00:41.892529Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @aeva Consider the applied version of software archaeology: The programmer-archaeologist, tasked with putting together working software from ancient pieces.
       
 (DIR) Post #ATZ6kmh0jnh9Le3SCW by Sivation@wandering.shop
       2023-03-11T01:08:19Z
       
       1 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @aeva I do entirely too much config archeology at work when we try to work out why the hell a specific setting was made over a decade ago.Sometimes, we have a useful change ticket… but most of the time? It just says “change X to be Y” 🤦
       
 (DIR) Post #ATZ6m9dOvUJSn41GsK by bradanlane@mastodon.social
       2023-03-11T11:26:02Z
       
       1 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @aeva this fits with a term I learned when I joined a startup. I asked about "documentation" to get up to speed, and I was told, it was "tribal knowledge". Understanding the code was passed on from Developer to Developer and flowers down from the "elders".
       
 (DIR) Post #ATbiMnitRMjQATqVVI by sora5084@tech.lgbt
       2023-03-13T11:55:24Z
       
       2 likes, 1 repeats
       
       @aeva '"software experimental archaeology" (attempting to reconstruct and demonstrate how people once built software)'Yeah... did that last year... Had to fix the bootloader for one of our legacy cameras that hadn't been touched in 10 years.Toolchain: I found multiple pieces scattered on servers and backups of former colleagues' computers.Sourcecode: Multiple source-tree copies + Git-conversions of the SourceSafe copies... None of which produced the exact bootloader that we used in production...In the end I reverse engineered the toolchain and the sourcecode to the point that I got a binary identical binary (minus timestamps). :blobcatuwu: