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I use to work on hospital lab software.

* It was over 20 years old by the time I started

* It was written in Fortran

* Variable names were single and double digits

* Each fortran program would run in isolation but had a shared memory process

* It was formally a terminal program but a weird Java frontend was created so everything looked like Windows GUI

* All program names were four letter acronyms

* All data was stored in fixed width binary "flat" files

* It previously was under CVS version control, but each install slowly drifted apart, so each site had it own unique features and bugs.

* I once had to move a significant feature from one install to another using only patch files generated from the work done on the original install.




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