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German railway seeks IT admin to manage MS-DOS and Windows 3.11 systems
(www.techspot.com)
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this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2024
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Frankly that's nothing. In the worst case a train won't start, which for DB really isn't something unusual. It's far more disturbing how the whole global financial market sometimes rely on code that's still written in COBOL.
Does this really matter? It's more of a maintenance issue than a functional one.
It all gets compiled down to binary, anyways.
it matters because it is a language that few people learn, so the available talent is scarce, increasing the chance something bad happens. Keeping up with an evolving society is essential for the longevity of a service
I have a friend who is going to take over maintenance for a smaller regional banking system in a few years. It's mostly COBOL and the systems themselves have not been updated in like 25-30 years. He has been apprenticing under his mother who has been in charge of maintaining the infrastructure there since the late '80s.
Time 2 years top, there will be an AI that converts perfectly COBOL into JavaScript.
Well it matters when it comes to replacing ageing programmers with very few options available. It's definitely not something taught in schools today, so one has to be very deliberately learn it.
Don't get me wrong, you can make a lot of money in such a position. But you also have to deal with COBOL.