If COBOL is so problematic, why does the US government still use it?

Comments

• Spitzspot@lemmings.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Simply re-write a modern relational database and then over a weekend, migrate decades worth of data all while being shortchanged every year by congressional budget cuts with programmers that wish to toil in obscurity while being paid bottom dollar. Where do I sign up to lead this shit-show?

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• Dyskolos@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Most likely reason they (and many others, including banks) still use it: Security. There are probably billions of vulnerabilities for everything and billions of people able to hack to some degree. I wonder if there even is some as400 hacker 😁 Also you can’t just decide to become one now, because you can’t simply download a compiler and emulator. You need access. And even if you managed that, those things are never online, so you’d need to be physically near. Name a more secure thing.

  Besides that shit just works. The more complex you make it, the more errors could occur. Really critical operations can’t have that.

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  • lost_faith@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Only draw back is getting replacement parts when they go down.

    I remember an old Undergrads ep where Gimpy was at a pc war games/hacker camp and when he tried to hack in to the opponents systems they were using like 10 yr old macs (at the time 2001 was when the series aired) and he couldn’t

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    • Dyskolos@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Not only that. Finding coders will be harder and harder too. As said, it’s not trivial to “now i learn this language”. And the youth surely doesn’t see any reason to picking this ancient fossil of yesteryear :)

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• leaky_shower_thought@feddit.nl ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  i have read somewhere that a lot of businesses there follows the saying “if it works, don’t fix it”

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  • possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Correction: if it works, don’t spend money on it

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    • leaky_shower_thought@feddit.nl ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      loool, fair point.

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