COBOL

[Jolly]

Was reading the other day, that there are still multinational programs that have COBOL underpinnings.

I thought COBOL was ancient, dead and buried?

[xenon]

It's everywhere, and it works, but very few know how to maintain it. The last bit is the problem.

It's dead and buried in the sense that no one would build anything new in it, but stuff that works in the business world rarely gets ripped out.

[Copper]

@Jolly said in COBOL:

I thought COBOL was ancient, dead and buried?

It is kind of like how internal combustion engines will be gone in a few years.

[Axtremus]

@Jolly said in COBOL:

I thought COBOL was ancient, dead and buried?

Yeah, it’s only used by dinosaurs who still use AOL email these days.

[Mik]

I’ll be happy to take a look for $250 an hour. That’s dinosaur scale.

And I still have an aol email. It’s a decent client. It’s a tool. If a tool does what you want to do and another tool provides no desirable benefit, we’re just being snobby now, not practical. COBOL is much the same and still runs much of the world.

[George K]

@Mik said in COBOL:

I’ll be happy to take a look for $250 an hour.

I'll do it for half that.

I wouldn't know what I'm looking AT, but I'd look regardless.

[Mik]

You get what you pay for.

Welcome to Mik’s Bargain Anesthesia Barn. Momma says knock you out.

[George K]

@Mik said in COBOL:

Welcome to Mik’s Bargain Anesthesia Barn. Momma says knock you out.

[jon-nyc]

When I was at Nasdaq in the late 90s, they ran the quote system on a unisys mainframe using MASM, which was the assembly language of Unisys mainframes.

They were replacing the system for decimalization (remember that?) and ran into problems with the new replacement system. They therefore had to update the old system to keep the SEC and congress from hanging them.

They called a couple of old timers out of retirement to do the work. One had cancer and months to live. He made them pay him enough to set his family up for the foreseeable future. They had no choice. They would have paid whatever it took.