SAS code works after 43 years: that's great or that's horrible?

[mcarniello]

<cross-posted to SGF 2019, sorry for any redundancy you see>

I'm working on an idea for a paper at SGF 2020, and it's based off the first paper in the proceedings of the first SUGI meeting in 1976.

In that paper, some guy named Goodnight describes the beta release of a new procedure called PROC GLM.

He writes:

The general form of these statements is as follows:

PROC GLM; CLASSES list;

MODEL dependent list = independent list I options;

The PROCEDURE statement has no options or parms. The CLASSES list contains classification variables (if any) just as with PROC REGR in SAS 72.

So ... is it wonderful that the same code works, as is, today? Isn't SAS great?

Or .... have we not moved on from this? Adherence to old structures/languages have hindered the product's advancement!

I'm not sure where I've landed on this, and I'm interested in the community's take on this question.

I may post elsewhere, to generate a discussion - but not sure where.

Thanks,

Mike Carniello

Astellas Pharma Global Development

[WarrenKuhfeld]

A tiny fraction of what you can do today with GLM existed in 1976. That is far more relevant than a 1976 program working today. GLM was rewritten and enhanced by several developers, and much of the functionality has been subsumed by newer procedures such as GLMSELECT.