The first programs were written in binary/hexadecimal, and only later did we invent coding languages to convert between human readable code and binary machine code.
So why can’t we just do the same thing in reverse? I hear a lot about devices from audio streaming to footware rendered useless by abandonware. Couldn’t a very smart person (or AI) just take the existing program and turn it into code?
Yes, and people do do it. It’s just incredibly difficult to do it even for relatively simple programs, and the more complex the program is, the more exponentially hard the reverse engineering will be.
The problem is not necessarily turning it into code, since many decompilers do it already for you nowadays. The issue is understanding what in the world the code is supposed to do. Normally, open source code would be commented and there would be documentation, so it’s easy to edit or build on the code. Decompiled code comes with no documentation or comments, and all the variable names are virtually illegible.
It’s sometimes easier to build something new than to fix what’s broken, and this would be one of those cases where it’s true
giggles under my breath