I think the missing piece from that exchange is the reality that a lot of surviving, legacy, mission critical applications is that they are generally internal to large companies and have grown over decades to encapsulate business processes for entire industries. Consider an application that has been under active development for 30-40 years by 10-100 developers. The cost to rewrite is staggering, and the risk of failure is huge.

i agree with that point and i would add a link to your comment if i could still add to that thread

I would add that that's the type of work our industry is mostly comprised of. What gets usually discussed here in HN is the tip of the iceberg.

i think that's mostly other industries where programmers work

i'm glad you're enjoying it! i found it very educational