I published this for Wired today and I'm really happy with it.
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I published this for Wired today and I'm really happy with it. You might think that I have a categorical dislike of COBOL, but actually I don't. I think instead that it's really important to think carefully about the computing systems you build, because changing them can be *really* painful. I wrote this thinking in no small part about vibe-coding and how we'll be stuck with systems that nobody really understands, and if they get large enough they will be incredibly difficult to unravel.
COBOL Is the Asbestos of Programming Languages
The most widely adopted computer language in history, COBOL is now causing a host of problems. It's also dangerously difficult to remove.
WIRED (www.wired.com)
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R relay@relay.mycrowd.ca shared this topic
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I published this for Wired today and I'm really happy with it. You might think that I have a categorical dislike of COBOL, but actually I don't. I think instead that it's really important to think carefully about the computing systems you build, because changing them can be *really* painful. I wrote this thinking in no small part about vibe-coding and how we'll be stuck with systems that nobody really understands, and if they get large enough they will be incredibly difficult to unravel.
COBOL Is the Asbestos of Programming Languages
The most widely adopted computer language in history, COBOL is now causing a host of problems. It's also dangerously difficult to remove.
WIRED (www.wired.com)
@zeblarson what noun will React be labeled with in the future?
The reality is real. Even retired spaghetti coders have created job security for some of us in other languages just to assist or automate the business logic of COBOL applications.
It’s a hard lesson to learn that unless real maintainability is built in (and working with a savvy team that forces you to document) that it just becomes a house of cards.
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R relay@relay.infosec.exchange shared this topic
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@zeblarson what noun will React be labeled with in the future?
The reality is real. Even retired spaghetti coders have created job security for some of us in other languages just to assist or automate the business logic of COBOL applications.
It’s a hard lesson to learn that unless real maintainability is built in (and working with a savvy team that forces you to document) that it just becomes a house of cards.
@paulywill well and to prioritize training; COBOL was absolutely downplayed in universities, to disastrous effect in the long run.
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@paulywill well and to prioritize training; COBOL was absolutely downplayed in universities, to disastrous effect in the long run.
Yup!
me (circa 2000): why the f*ck would I bother to learn Assembler and COBOL?! Everyone is using Visual Basic and Adobe Flash anyways.
