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A comment on Japanese textile factory still uses tape cassette and punch cards. Parent comment

Re:Japanese textile factory still uses tape cassette and pun... by rewmie on Monday July 10, 2023 @08:17AM (#36665255)
> Why should you want to change this?

Organizations tend to invest in their operations if there are significant improvements to be made. This includes things like dealing with problems such as the availability of cassetes, if the legacy system becomes too old to maintain in a cost effective way, if it's still possible to source parts, etc.

Digital systems are widespread because they are widespread and dirt cheap, and thus the tradeoff of increasing the complexity does add value.

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Re:Japanese textile factory still uses tape cassette and pun... by Eisenstein on Monday July 10, 2023 @08:41AM (#36665485)
> Digital systems are widespread because they are widespread and dirt cheap

They also churn, and finding people who can (and will) work on legacy systems isn't easy either. Get rid of something that worked for 40 years because everyone uses this other thing (but will use something else 10 years from now that we can't predict) is dumb unless there is a very valid reason.

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