Seeing stuff like that just makes me appreciate that much more on where I work and the hardware/software (which is mostly latest-greatest) that I get to play with everyday. Because, I have absolutely
zero (0) interest in going anywhere where I might have to work with outdated, archaic stuff.
We pretty much have the latest & greatest on all new projects
Tesla is touted as one of the highest tech factories in the world
... But when I went there I saw that they still have
... Allen Bradley PLC 2's dragging the cars down the assembly line
... GUI has been updated of course
... but the PLC2's all still work quite well
... The factory is 1963 vintage & used to be the General Motors
... Pontiac, Buick, Oldsmobile, & Pickup Truck plant
Not much really archaic about some 30 year old panels as far as software goes
I use much of the the same code structure that I used back then
... Of I course take advantage of newer things like UDT's
Running an entire plant with only 100k of memory
... Teaches you how to abstract things to a high level
... This makes scaling up to very large systems much more organized & efficient
Most programs I open theses days are filled with an endless amount of bloat
Either the programs are not thought out before hand,
... the programmer is lazy, inexperienced or under pressure to kick something quickly
... Of which I have been/done all of the above
Programming while the project is not fully defined & I/O constantly changing is the worse case
Managers try to throw more people on a project to speed it up
... They never seem to understand that
... It takes 1 woman 9 months to make a baby
... 9 women cannot make a baby in 1 month
It actually takes more man hours because you will have
... 9 people in a hurry doing 9 styles of PLC programming & 9 styles of GUI programming
... stepping all over each other leaving a big mess in the end
... from experience
