The Programmer-Archaeologist churns through this maddening nest of ancient languages and hidden/forgotten tools to repair existing programs or to find odd things that can be turned to unanticipated uses.
One of the aspects of working as a developer in an “enterprise” is that you often find yourself knee-deep in ancient piles of software, developed by some long-dead civilization, who left behind only ambiguous scratchings on stone tablets as documentation.
I will say that there’s a certain element of adventure to these things. You’ll discover tantalizing clues that you’ll piece together to divine the intentions behind the creators of these strange, crumbling structures.
And just as “maintenance” programming is some of the most difficult programming I’ve ever had to do, enterprise archaeology has been some of the most interesting.
