At work today my supervisor had to run some SAS code that was ~20 years old.  The program had a number of lines of code meant for the mainframe environment.  By removing those lines and adding a libname statement, he was able to run the code without any errors.

It amazed me that, even 20 years later, the code still works.  Can we say this for any other vendor?

I also program in Asp.Net / C#.  I found that moving code from the .Net 1.0 framework to the .Net 2.0 framework sometimes required maintenance and updates.  That’s only a difference of a few years at the most!

It also then amazes me why the Alberta Government (whom I work for) does not embrace the use of SAS for most (if not all) of its analytical solutions.  It seems that they prefer contracting vendors with black box, custom built software or web applications which have limited features and expensive upgrades.  To top it off, how many of these vendors will still be around in the future?  A lot of these IT companies come and go.  If they don’t disappear, then maybe they go stale or the product becomes unsupported.  Now suddenly a new vendor and a complete overhaul of the old solution is needed.

I’ve only been with the Alberta Government for a few years and I’ve already witnessed this behavoir.  But I shouldn’t be too harsh.  There are a number of kick ass things the Alberta Government is doing in the tech side of things.  I just wish they’d consider harnessing the power of SAS a bit more than they are.  At least there is longer term support with minimal maintenance.

Here’s to SAS - 20 years later and it’s still alive and kickin’.