I know I should be pleased that I don’t get that.
Unfortunately they can’t blame him, most of the systems that are 30+ years old and running 24/7 are now failing.
Are these actually hardware failures where physical stuff really does wear out ?
With software I can see how some ancient code might not run under the only operating systems that anyone now supports, for example. But that doesn’t sound like the sort of ‘fault’ where the system would be fine one millisecond and then crash the next. I’d hope to get plenty of warning of code obsolescence so I had time to do something about it.
I can’t speak for the air traffic control systems. However my first job was as a “systems programmer” (operating system development and maintenance).
The operating system in question (and its predecessor from which a fair bit of the code was lifted) was pretty long in the tooth and we spent a great deal of time tracking down and fixing problems that had arisen because the original design centre was no longer reality.
Storage and data was now unimaginably bigger than it had originally been leading to a lot of problems. CPU speed had increased to the point where timing windows once effectively impossible to hit were now gaping chasms. This sort of thing.
Software rots. It needs constant attention as the world around it changes. I spent a lot of my life picking up the pieces where a company developed or bought software and viewed it as a fixed asset that would just carry on doing The Thing forever without any ongoing costs. This is not the case.
A friend learnt all his skills using COBOL in Rhodesia (as was) which was under UN embargo, so were still using old hardware and systems. He came back to the UK in the 80s expecting to be out of date but found his skills were still in demand and has been in continuous employment by various banks and pension companies ever since maintaining and patching old code.
Yes and No.
What might be a minor software blip elsewhere can’t be tolerated. The systems are designed to “fail safe” in the event of an error. If the flight processing system detects an error it disconnects from what the controllers use and stops processing data until the fault is resolved and cleared.
It might only be a millisecond blip but when that fail safe happens the controllers have to implement flow control as they cannot verbally manage all the aircraft handovers between sectors.
The software is essentially around 60yrs old but the mainframe hardware has been replaced over the years so it’s now running JOVIAL in a virtual machine environment on the IBM servers
ALGOL 
Yeah, I kinda get all this in a completely uninformed ‘schoolboy’ way. But wasn’t this all true 30 years ago ? It worked just fine then. But it fails now. That’s the bit I’m curious about.
I see where Guy says
so software which coped once can’t cope now. But planes are still planes. They drive around the airport then they take off and fly and land. Are there ten times as many now ? Are they ten times closer together ? I’d be surprised if they were going ten times as fast. Did we once allow ten times as many near misses ? Somehow it feels like it should be the same code handling much the same problems.
I can see where we’d be in real trouble if it were written to run under MS/DOS though and now the only reliable hardware insists on Win11. But it sounds like you’re saying the thing is still running under something quite archaic, or at least something which emulates being archaic.
No it didn’t work fine 30yrs ago. It was up and down like a yo-yo 30yrs ago and the benefit of having a common software platform is that in the first 10yrs or so 99% of the bugs were experienced/found and resolved.
Christ. Have the bears not suffered enough?
Bonkers in Barnsley?
Shame they can’t pay their delivery staff a decent income. They keep them self employed, make them liable for fuel, transport, insurance etc, lucky if they make 8 quid an hour.
Robots in winter up North would be interesting.
Indeed.
The wheels would be off in no time, resprayed robot and converted into a red bull go cart.
Saw this on the beeb website and a google later looks like his pork pie business is still going
Well I don’t think much of ours or the US’s weapons if it takes so many to sink a rusty old ship 
- The former guided missile frigate was struck by a missile from USS Paul Ignatius
- a torpedo from USS Massachusetts
- HMS Portland, a Type 23 frigate, fired a Naval Sea Missile (NSM)
- Wildcat helicopter also fired Sea Venom missiles at the target.