Mike Dougherty-384281 (5/9/2013)
However given that so much of the airline industry relies on systems that were developed decades ago, perhaps I shouldn't be surprised.
Are you implying that old code is inherently inferior to modern code?
No.
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That the expected use case(s) [normal behavior] works smoothly as frequently as it does I think deserves some kudos.
It does, and I should have pointed out how well things seem to work.
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(that maybe didn't anticipate 'modern' craziness)
I'm not trying to be an apologist for crufty old code. However, in some cases old code survives as long as it does because it works so well there's no reason to risk system stability by replacing it with the flavor of the month.
It's not that the code is old; it's what you referenced. Modern craziness, and new requirements exist. We've shoehorned some of those features in there, and that causes issues. We've also scaled. Code doesn't always scale, as much as we'd like it to.