Generally speaking, the stuff I have to support is largely one-off. That means that the machine controller in question is unique. There's no reason they'd buy a multi-kilobuck compiler to do a job that I'd prefer to do in ASM. Every 1en-twenty years or so, they come back to me with an enhancement or upgrade that they want, and I try to figure out a cheap way to give 'em what they want.

The only reason they might want to be able to take over the responsibility for their firmware is because I'm beyond retirement age and have one foot in the grave and another on a banana peel. Most of 'em are about my age, too. They probably figure, as I do, that the problems, along with the benefits, go to their "heirs and assigns" when the time comes.

RE