There have been disasters, classic movies that have been lost or badly damaged. They're getting systematic about doing backups so their work has historic value and as an investment in the future. Software is different Software is different from film. Even slight damage to a piece of software can render it unusable, where a film can sustain a lot of damage and still be viewable. In film there are just a few formats, a few different kinds of players.
Software is more complex.
The machine is long gone, but I still have the floppies containing the code I was working on. I doubt it. Now we use Metrowerks and Microsoft's development environments on Macs and Win32. I have no idea if any of it is readable or usable. We leave things behind.