2 ms·
What is far more scary than the old stuff our government is running in COBOL, is the new stuff running in Excel. Excel became a de facto Common Business Oriente
by jerzyt 7y ago
What is far more scary than the old stuff our government is running in COBOL, is the new stuff running in Excel.
Excel became a de facto Common Business Oriented Language (COBOL), accessibly to anybody. Old COBOL programs were still developed with some software engineering discipline. Current Excel spreadsheets have none of that.
And, this doesn't apply to the government only - private enterprise runs bazillions(?) untested, unverified spreadsheets.
Wish I could share what I've seen.
- gHeadphone 7y agoThat’s true. I used to work in one of the biggest banks in the world. More than half the divisions were dependent on Excel. Every time there was an audit, a huge bunch of spreadsheets were automated. By the time the automation was complete, another hundred spreadsheets would have popped up. It was like trying to spray weeds. I remember one spreadsheet that contained the only formula for calculating risk in an almost billion dollar portfolio. Genuinely scary stuff.