VA VistA is not “Old”

Recently ComputerWorld released an otherwise good article entitled: Old code proves key to modern IT at Midland Memorial Hospital.

The first paragraph reads in part:

For Midland Memorial Hospital, this came in the form of 1970s-era code unearthed via the Freedom of Information Act.

This is really frustrating. VistA is old. But it is not older than Unix which is the basis for Linux AND Windows.  It is not older than C which is the basis for C++, C#, Mono, .Net and to a lesser extent Java, PHP, Python, Ruby (in terms of syntax and overall structure).

The VA updates VistA every year. The version that Midland Memorial uses is the same version that has been recently improved by the VA.

This article makes it sound like it was literally dug up by an archeologist.  It paints a picture of David Whiles in his Indiana Jones hat with a shovel. Digging up the EHR artifact that an ancient advanced civilization used. As David wipes of the dirt he exclaims “Oh my… this is a little rusty… but it just might work!!. Then he takes the code back home to Midland, sprays it with WD-40 and gets it to run!!

This happens all the time. People hear that VistA has been in use since the 70’s and the cannot let go of how “old” it is. Hate to break it to you, but almost every core technology that you use on a daily basis has its roots in the 70’s.

Please do not tell me “Oh but HTML (or insert your technology here) came much later”. Yea but HTML does not work that well without HTTP, and for that you need a robust network. Guess when that started becoming available. Its not like VistA has been siting idle either. VistA has features that were developed in the 80’s. It has features that were new in the 90’s. It has features that are being developed now!

Meeting VistA for the first time is like visiting Australia for the first time. You see all of these marvelous creatures who have evolved in a different way, because they evolved independently. You see different “designs” or the application of the same “designs” in different ways. The one thing you should not say when seeing the strange lifeforms in Australia is “Wow, these animals must be very very old species”

No Rufus-brain. The species in Australia are not any “older” than any species in the rest of the world. What is exceptional is that this species evolved separately. Different? Yes. Backward? Maybe. Original? Definitely. But not “Old”.

VA VistA newbies constantly assume that VistA is a single instance of a program, rather than the latest instance of a program, in a long history of instances of that program. They see it as a single Tortoise that lived for forty years, rather than the latest bunny rabbit, in chain of forty one-year generations of bunny rabbits. But even this picture is inaccurate.

Another hallmark of the VistA-ignorant is to talk about VistA as though it were -one- thing. In reality it is a whole suite of technologies, that are evolving together in isolation. VA VistA is a lot more like the whole biological sphere of Australia, with lots of different species that are evolving together, all of them evolving differently than the species in the rest of the world.

Please do not call VA VistA “old” out of context. This is a mark of ignorance and is independant of whether you like VistA or not.

-FT

2 thoughts on “VA VistA is not “Old”

  1. VistA may have many incarnations in the last 40 years but as Biomeds the incarnation we deal with is a DOS look alike. If we had some more functionality to work with (now we have menus that you have to hand jam through) maybe we could spend less time closeing out Work Orders and more time with equipment.

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