Societies Legacy Code #39 #cong24 #legacy
Synopsis:
A joint, chinese whispered blog between Dermot Casey, Joan Mulvihill and Alan Costello. It turned out to have some past, present and future vibes
Total Words
Reading Time in Minutes
3
Key Takeaways:
- Consider legacy code
- Consider your current state
- Spot future building blocks earlier
About Dermot, Alan & Joan:
Its Dermot, Joan and Alan.
You know us!
Contacting Joan, Alan & Demrot
See Joan, Dermot & Alan’s submissions.
By Alan, Joan, Dermot
Tradition is peer pressure from dead people as someone once quipped. In practice its one element in the web of social Legacy Codes we’re all bound in. ‘Legacy code’ is an idea from software development. Something needs to be done so we build some software to do it. It works. It creates lots of value, and the needs don’t change frequently so it gets locked in place. Banking systems build in the COBOL language in the 1960s persist today. I’ve a photo of a headstone for COBOL in the Boston Computer Museum (BCM) from 1992. The BCM closed in 1999 while COBOL rolls on. There’s still 800 billion lines of COBOL running globally supporting $3trillion and 95% of ATM transactions in 2024. Changing things is hard. It takes an awful lot of work. Despite newer better and simpler ways to do things social legacies persist for a very long time.
Despite only 5% of 25-35 year olds being practising Catholics 90% of their kids have to go to Catholic primary schools. Keynes recognising the persistence and perniciousness of another form of legacy social code commented “Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.”
And there it is. The burden of legacy. How do I live up to what has gone before me? What if I’m not as good and weaken the chain? What if it all falls apart on my watch? There is inherent pressure with legacy to maintain the standard and build upon it. There is better code than cobol yet cobol persists, why? Because cobol works. It provided a solid foundation upon which to build. That is legacy. The alternative is to unravel and dismantle all that is old and build from new each time. That is wasteful, disrespectful and dangerous. Just as the rings in the tree record the years, so too with old code, old buildings, old streets. To erase the legacy code, religion, economics, buildings, streets is to delete the records, delete the learning. Legacy is the foundation for growth, each generation setting out with a benchmark from which they can do more, go farther and faster than the one before. And yet, for the first time this new generation will not be as well off as their parents. They will not be able to buy their own homes. But does this mean that they will have failed to build upon the legacy or is it us who have failed them? The burden of legacy is not just in living up to what we receive but in making sacrifice for what we will leave.
The meme that highlights – Sometimes, the purpose of your life is to serve as a warning to others’, could pertain here. And its also not to vilify the past, not over rose lens it. There were failings but rather than history wash them, lets spotlight & learn.
There may be a lot of points of view about setting/defining your legacy, but we are looking here at the outcomes of legacy as foundational blocks for our future selves.
Can we see foundational blocks that we are laying today, even if we dont know that is what they are? Is our development and utilisation of social media something our future selves may look back on and say “ ah, yes, that was the Pandoras box, but we didnt know. What are we burning today to de-power our future legacy. Are we looking equitably at all peoples around us today.
What markers or signals can we use to consider this, knowing that we overestimate in the short term and vastly underestimate in the legacy building term.
Maybe we should all have consideration for a little lepidopterology….