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I code in COBOL. I don't like it that people think it's dead or legacy because often times it isn't and that mindset keeps people from caring about security or
by mveety 11y ago
I code in COBOL. I don't like it that people think it's dead or legacy because often times it isn't and that mindset keeps people from caring about security or using current best practices in COBOL code. Very important things still run on it and new code to run important things is being written in it.
There are a ton of systems that people think are dead or legacy like OpenVMS (what I love and work on) or IBM Mainframes are still current and in use and new installations are going up, and the legacy mindset hinders security best practices and doing new and interesting shit on these systems.
- dragonwriter 11y ago> I don't like it that people think it's dead or legacy because often times it isn't and that mindset keeps people from caring about security or using current best practices in COBOL code. The only reason COBOL isn't dead is because it is legacy (or, rather, because there is mountains of -- often undocumented, untested, and with requirements and domain knowledge largely lost and buried in the code -- legacy code written in it.) And that code didn't have security or best practices (including things like loosely-coupled components with well-defined purposes) kept in mind when it was first written, which makes updating it in a manner which respects security and best practices difficult, at best. The new code being written in COBOL is largely extensions and updates to existing legacy systems. No doubt there are some exceptions, but they are a small fraction of what is going on with COBOL, which is itself a shrinking niche in programming overall.