I'm in Brisbane for a couple of days, handing over some programs that I wrote nearly 20 years ago to someone local to carry on supporting them, so I went for a long walk playing Ingress around Fortitude Valley and New Farm, and then across Story Bridge where I was doing some slow handheld shots to try and capture the frenetic haste of the cars in the peaceful moment of the warm Brisbane evening.
I'm amazed that some software I wrote back in 1995 is still in active use - the expectation back then was for maybe 10 years - even though it is clearly not "modern" software. And then I look at this bridge, and the hand railing that a slim toddler could easily scramble through (or under!) and I wonder if the designer lived long enough to see how it doesn't quite fit the modern need even if it is quite a delightful structure, and it achieves it's main goal quite well. Did they envisage the issues with their design that would result in signs offering "help line" plastered every twenty metres along the railing.
The things that didn't work, when we review old projects are at least as interesting as the things that did, because they are the ones that offer hope of a better future, even if the successes offer us a nicer pat on the back.