Comment on abandonware empires

Zehzin@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

• TheLameSauce@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  There is genuine money to be made in learning the “dead languages” of the IT world. If you’re the only person within 500 Miles that knows how to maintain COBOL you can basically name your price when it comes to salary.

  I just wish I had the slightest interest in programing

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  • cm0002@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I’ve seriously looked into picking one of these dead languages up and honestly, it’s not worth it.

    Biggest issue is, you have to be experienced to some degree before you get the name your price levels. So you’ll have to take regular ol average programmer pay (at best) for a language that’s a nightmare in 2023. Your sanity is at heavy risk.

    I’d honestly rather bash my head with assembly, it’s still very much in use these days in a modern way. Most programs still get compiled into it anyway (Albeit to a far more complicated instruction set than in the past) and can still land some well paid positions for not a whole lot of experience (relatively)

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    • Technus@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Yeah everytime someone says “just learn COBOL, you’ll make tons of money,” it’s like,

      Bro.

      There’s a reason no one wants to write new software in these languages anymore, let alone maintain a forty-year-old pile of technical debt.

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    • SamirCasino@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Been working in COBOL for a decade and this is all true.

      I’m lucky. I personally enjoy it. But i can totally see how it’s an absolute nightmare for most people.

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    • grue@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I’ve been meaning to learn Fortran in part because because of the whole “big bucks for being willing to maintain old software” thing, but mostly because I’d like to work on the sorts of scientific computing software that was (and still often is) written in Fortran.

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      • PoisonedPrisonPanda@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Fortran syntax is a warm summer rain tickling your face compared to c++ for high performance computing which is like slap in the face for non it peeps

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    • psud@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      COBOL isn’t too terrible, it has its gotchas (like sizing variables for inputs (in which you don’t need space for the datas headers and will break stuff if you do)) but mostly it’s an old language designed to be easy to use

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  • Potatos_are_not_friends@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    This is one of those fantasies people have. You might as well hope to win the lottery.

    Imagine being the only person who can play a extremely custom instrument. Unless someone absolutely needs you, you’ll be sitting and hoping to get a job. Worse, a company is more likely to hire some people to rebuild it rather than hope to find this unicorn who can do this.

    Source: Been in the industry for 15yrs. I’m one of those guys you hire to migrate old software to a web app. And frequently, company will pay to modernize rather than support outdated tech every time.

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    • SamirCasino@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Been in the industry for 10 years and i deeply disagree with you. I work in COBOL.

      Not that migrations don’t happen, but in my experience, many, many companies kick that can down the road each year, because migrating huge and critical services is extremely costly, time-consuming and risky. In the short term, just paying people to maintain the dinosaurs is waaaay cheaper.

      Also, it’s extremely easy to get a job in it ( my company now hires people with no IT background and tries to teach them cobol from scratch ), because even though it’s a niche, the demand for it still outweighs the supply of people willing to learn it.

      Will it die out eventually? Maybe. I’ve been hearing about its death for a decade, so i’ve become skeptical about it in the short-term.

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      • oxideseven@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        I’ll learn cobol. What company? I do have an it background as a bonus though.

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    • Isycius@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      COBOL case is bit different. You can’t just modernize millions of lines of code that is functionally unique without service disruption - and services that uses COBOL that large often tends to be very sensitive.

      The fact that COBOL as a language is both atrocity to either use or read didn’t help that either.

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    • Honytawk@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Unlike a custom instrument, a dead programming language can be company critical though.

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  • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    How about a little casual graming on the side?

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• Treczoks@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Just have a look at the American pension system. They collect all their documents on paper in an old salt mine. Truckloads of documents per month.

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• SupraMario@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  There is some logic to running older stuff, a lot of it is a closed system and it’s harder for threats to target it. Banks are a big one that still run a ton of our financial infrastructure on COBOL.

  Hospitals also run on a ton of abandon ware, same with machine shops. Ultrasound machines that are still running 95 because for the hospital to upgrade to windows 7 or 10 is millions for a few machines. So you just airgap the systems for security.

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  • PrincessLeiasCat@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Credit to them for not wanting to move to 98 either.

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• mayoi@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Magnetic tapes aren’t that surprising, it’s just even more cost effective storage than HDD.

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