3 ms·

Nope sorry, “legacy finance” is not going to die in ten years. This is a legacy finance and fintech world for the foreseeable future. Bitcoin and the like are

by DLA 6y ago

Nope sorry, “legacy finance” is not going to die in ten years. This is a legacy finance and fintech world for the foreseeable future. Bitcoin and the like are microscopic compared to the trillions in legacy finance. You gonna run billions of transactions between money center banks with some code off github? Right. People have been “predicting” the death of COBOL and C for a long time. Still running the world they are.

maxharris 6y ago
Seven months ago, I had a similar conversation about Tesla. I'm doing pretty well today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22964850 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22964850 Square is going to keep booming. I bought most of shares at $47-$57 in the spring, and I just saw them blow past $206 this morning. I ditched my Wells Fargo accounts in the summer, and haven't looked back. Cash App is easy to use, and they can make loans that ordinary banks never will. If you want to compare notes and see how we did in 2030, I'm maxharris9 on Twitter.
- DLA 6y ago
  You changed a COBOL argument to a stock performance argument. I'm up over 200% in Tesla and over 100% in oh god so-much-COBOL Mastercard. Cars are not COBOL and massive interconnected financial networks. How many Tesla crashes have been attributed to failures in self-driving. Way more than failed wire transfers, pension payments, bond issuances, dividend payments, cleared stock transactions, etc. Square is not a money center bank nor a major broker-dealer and they never will be. Their business is point-of-sale not international FX, issuing securities, managing trillions in pensions, etc. How much of the global financial flow does Square have? A rounding error. The argument is now about the merits of Square vs Citibank, saying Square is bad, or that they won't grow (I own it too). The author's point in the article is the this bullet proof code, while very out of fashion, is durable and has been proven over time so it is likely to be around for a long time still. (Lindy Effect [1]) EDIT: Who is you broker? One of the fancy new mobile apps like Robinhood (I use 'em too). Guess what? They've cleared trades through APEX, an old-school firm likely with COBOL inside, until recently. Turns out brokerage ops are challenging as Robinhood found out at exactly the wrong time [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect [2] https://www.fa-mag.com/news/the-robinhood-outage-is-a-cautionary-tale-of-taking-your-tech-in-house-54430.html https://www.fa-mag.com/news/the-robinhood-outage-is-a-cautio...
  - maxharris 6y ago
    I use ETRADE. Square is not a money center bank nor a major broker-dealer and they never will be. I say they will be, you say they won't. Let's revisit this in a decade when we actually know which one of us is right. I hate COBOL with a passion. I spent a year of my life working with it (Micro Focus COBOL on Solaris!) and my hope is that every single line of it gets ripped out and replaced with something reasonable.

by DLA 6y ago

maxharris 6y ago

Seven months ago, I had a similar conversation about Tesla. I'm doing pretty well today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22964850 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22964850 Square is going to keep booming. I bought most of shares at $47-$57 in the spring, and I just saw them blow past $206 this morning. I ditched my Wells Fargo accounts in the summer, and haven't looked back. Cash App is easy to use, and they can make loans that ordinary banks never will. If you want to compare notes and see how we did in 2030, I'm maxharris9 on Twitter.

DLA 6y ago
You changed a COBOL argument to a stock performance argument. I'm up over 200% in Tesla and over 100% in oh god so-much-COBOL Mastercard. Cars are not COBOL and massive interconnected financial networks. How many Tesla crashes have been attributed to failures in self-driving. Way more than failed wire transfers, pension payments, bond issuances, dividend payments, cleared stock transactions, etc. Square is not a money center bank nor a major broker-dealer and they never will be. Their business is point-of-sale not international FX, issuing securities, managing trillions in pensions, etc. How much of the global financial flow does Square have? A rounding error. The argument is now about the merits of Square vs Citibank, saying Square is bad, or that they won't grow (I own it too). The author's point in the article is the this bullet proof code, while very out of fashion, is durable and has been proven over time so it is likely to be around for a long time still. (Lindy Effect [1]) EDIT: Who is you broker? One of the fancy new mobile apps like Robinhood (I use 'em too). Guess what? They've cleared trades through APEX, an old-school firm likely with COBOL inside, until recently. Turns out brokerage ops are challenging as Robinhood found out at exactly the wrong time [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect [2] https://www.fa-mag.com/news/the-robinhood-outage-is-a-cautionary-tale-of-taking-your-tech-in-house-54430.html https://www.fa-mag.com/news/the-robinhood-outage-is-a-cautio...
- maxharris 6y ago
  I use ETRADE. Square is not a money center bank nor a major broker-dealer and they never will be. I say they will be, you say they won't. Let's revisit this in a decade when we actually know which one of us is right. I hate COBOL with a passion. I spent a year of my life working with it (Micro Focus COBOL on Solaris!) and my hope is that every single line of it gets ripped out and replaced with something reasonable.