Strangest Technology Stack as a Software Developer

As a software developer, one of the most fascinating roles has been working with unique and often strange technology stacks. The variety of these stacks can range from legacy systems that seem straight out of the 1960s to cutting-edge tools that have been heavily customized. In this article, I will share some of the most peculiar and interesting technology stacks I've encountered during my career.

Legacy Systems: A Journey Back in Time

COBOL and Assembly Language - Remember the days when COBOL, a programming language designed to be size-efficient, was a common sight? I once worked on a team where COBOL was combined with assembly language, as the lead developer believed this combination could solve all the world's problems. Although it's not as common today as it once was, encountering a blend of these languages still stands out as particularly unique.

Complex and Bizarre Legacy Systems

The most absurd stack, in my opinion, came in the form of a CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture) core system built back in the 90s. CORBA was designed to allow different applications and objects to communicate with each other across multiple platforms. Implementing a “Hello World” program on such a system would require an astounding number of files. In fact, creating a simple “Hello World” program demanded a total of 13 files on the server, which is far from intuitive.

Striving for Customization in Every Stack

When it comes to assessing a new technology stack, one of the first things I do is write a simple “Hello World” program. This provides a key foundation of the stack's basic input-output. However, what I've learned over the years is that every stack, regardless of when it was created, becomes strange the moment custom configurations are introduced. For instance, a company might build its platform on a Java stack, but the Java itself might be so heavily customized that it becomes unrecognizable. The same constructs and general rules are used, but everything else is tailor-made.

Unique Legacy Systems

A particularly shonky setup involved a VB6 and Access backend that uploaded CSV files to a Perl-based web server. This server would then use Grep to respond to search queries directly on the CSV files. To ensure the server did not go down during the upload process, there was a flag that determined whether the system was uploading data A or data B, and the site would switch to the other data after the upload. This was the core business of a job site after it had been acquired for millions of dollars. The solution, of course, was to replace the entire setup with .NET when I took over as the IT manager, and by the time I left after 18 months, not a single line of the original code remained in production.

These experiences serve as a reminder that customizing a default stack can lead to incredibly unusual and sometimes difficult environments. But it also highlights the importance of adaptability and the continuous evolution of technology stacks in the software development world.