The World Depends on 60-Year-Old Code No One Knows Anymore
byu/debordian inprogramming
Ancillas
Had to learn COBOL and JCL at my first job. It wasn’t tremendously hard, but there was a huge volume of programs to understand.
At one point I was maintaining code written in 1969 where there was a bug that no one was supposed to fix because there was 45 years worth of programs that assumed that bug was present.
midri
Load bearing bug
ejfrodo
I spent a while building a code analysis tool for an ancient proprietary language that was basically a superset of Pascal. A multi billion dollar company was built on this. Nobody at the company fully knew how it worked because they’d all retired years ago so I just had to be a code archeologist and hunt through the ruins. That was an interesting project
giantsparklerobot
Part of the problem with COBOL is it was meant for non-programmers to be able to encode/automate literal business logic. Maintaining or replacing a COBOL system isn’t only about just the code. The under-specified business process needs to be reimplemented with 50-60 years worth of special exemptions and in many cases load bearing bugs.
You can learn COBOL as easily as any other language. It’s much harder to bring in someone that understands the business process that COBOL automated.
RearExitOnly
Finally someone who gets it. I was well paid not because I was the worlds best COBOL programmer, but because I was an expert on grain contracts. In the Midwest I was never out of work and usually made more than double what PC guys were making back in the 80’s.
Maleficent_Mouse_930
I am currently leading a squad developing a replacement for a core banking program originally In COBOL, and the complexity is 100% in the actual operations. The code ain’t too tough, but it’s been 18 months so far of reverse engineering back and forth with the finance and compliance guys trying to nail down what’s needed. Every time we find a new intricacy and tell them, they’re like “Oh yeah, didn’t we tell you that?”
Morons. They’ve been relying on this software so long they don’t even know their own jobs any more.