The Old Software Fallacy

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Something that comes up time and again is the complaint about using old software. A classic example is the Xorg vs Wayland debate.
This fallacy is the claim that because the Initial Release Date is earlier, that it must therefor need replacing.
This is a fallacy because much of the software we use today is not only old, but older and undergoes persistent maintenance and evolution.
It also is a fallacy in that if something is to replace it; it must bring the same functionality, not rely on the old system it is replacing and improve the performance. Wayland utterly fails the first two and the third is situational dependent.
Importantly, we should examine whether age is an actual factor.
Everything listed below is active presently, currently maintained and currently evolving. Name followed by initial release date:

C                                    1972
Fortran                              1957
COBOL                                1959
Perl                                 1987
GCC                                  1987
MIDI                                 1983
LaTeX                                1985
SQLite                               2000
Vi                                   1976
Vim                                  1991
Emacs                                1976
Bash                                 1989
MATLAB                               1984
PGP                                  1991
OpenSSL                              1998
Apache HTTP                          1995
BIND (DNS)                           1983
OpenSSH                              1999
Postfix                              1997
Sendmail                             1983
BSD Unix                             1977
Linux kernel                         1991
Modern Windows NT kernel             1993
OpenVPN                              2001
Kerberos                             1983
Lisp                                 1958 (used to develop A.I. today)
CDE                                  1993
Audacity                             1999
GIMP                                 1995
Blender                              1995
DOS                                  1981
IBM AS                               1988
OpenBSD                              1996

Being old does not mean outdated, defunct, irrelevant or abandoned.
This list can get a whole lot longer should I really have gone out and made it so. The vast majority of the software the average daily users relies on is much older than they think it is.

And there is a great deal that the average user does not see; does not use themselves, but rely on heavily once we start listing that which is used for databases, scientific, governmental, utility and military. That list would dwarf this one above.

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The same comment could be applied to humans! The only issue I had with that list is Audacity - not the old one but the version from 3 up where it spies on what you are using it for.

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A main issue I have about software is the absolutely strange obsession with needing to have the latest release of a piece of software as soon as it gets put out. As long as everything for me keeps working, I don't really need to go out and update as soon as the update gets put out.

I'll go about my usual updates every month or so and check everything, but even if it took say a year to get an updated program, then so be it. My computer has been working flawlessly since 17 was released, and I wish to keep it that way.

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Thats a good list!
You could add Pascal. I had a course in Pascal at University in the late 80's, it has been around a while [1970].

My approach is: if it works and does what I need it to, or I like how it works, I'll keep it as-is and stable for as long as possible. I'll upgrade if new features offer something useful, not if its basically just a change for change sake. Some updates seem more driven by what is useful to the software publisher (Microsoft), so no thanks.

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