In Vernor Vinge's novel A Deepness in the Sky, Pham Nuwen, the main character, says he wants to become a Programmer-Archaeologist, the most profitable profession in galactic civilization. His mentor explains:
Over thousands of years, the machine memories have been filled with programs that can help. But like Brent says, many of those programs are lies, all of them are buggy, and only the top-level ones are precisely appropriate for our needs.
The Programmer-Archaeologist searches for useful code in the archives of software on the Internet and modifies it for current needs.