PDP-11 Still Working In Nuclear Plants - For 37 More Years 336
Taco Cowboy writes "Most of the younger /. readers never heard of the PDP-11, while we geezers have to retrieve bits and pieces of our affairs with PDP-11 from the vast warehouse inside our memory lanes."
From the article: "HP might have nuked OpenVMS, but its parent, PDP-11, is still spry and
powering GE nuclear power-plant robots and will do for another 37 years. That's right: PDP-11 assembler programmers are hard to find, but the nuclear industry is planning on keeping them until 2050 — long enough for a couple of generations of programmers to come and go." Not sure about the OpenVMS vs PDP comparison, but it's still amusing that a PDP might outlast all of the VAX machines.
That's just cruel (Score:5, Funny)
... until 2050 — long enough for a couple of generations of programmers to come and go.
By their short lives I imagine that they must make them work in a high-radiation area.
Re:Well, if you're really that old... (Score:3, Funny)
Okay, noob.
Re:I cut my teeth on that CPU (Score:5, Funny)
Re:If it ain't broke... (Score:5, Funny)
"Just because they weigh a hundred times more doesn't mean they are a hundred times more reliable."
But it is a hundred times more satisfying to shove it off a building when it misbehaves. At least, that's how it works with copiers.
Re:Well, if you're really that old... (Score:2, Funny)
Ever tried running a web browser on a PDP-11?
Recruiting PDP-11 people should be easy... (Score:4, Funny)
..unless MBAs get involved.
Find some CS grads, offer them PDP-11 training and assembler training and a job paying slightly-above-average wages & bennies and tell them the job is guaranteed for the next 30 years.
Right now that sounds pretty good to me --- guaranteed employment on a well-understood platform for 30 more years (although I really only need about 20-25 more years..)
Sure, some guys would rather slave away 80 hours a week to develop iPhone apps, Metro tiles or Web X.0 apps because that's what all the cool guys are doing and it's "the future" (until those jobs are shipped off to the next up-and-coming third world country).
Of course, MBAs would manage to fuck this up by deciding that because it's an "obsolete" technology, you don't need to pay anything.