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Agreed on everything you say, except I still find it curious why these seasonal "let's learn COBOL" posts find a place here on HN. I mean, yes, there's a chall
by the_af 5y ago
Agreed on everything you say, except I still find it curious why these seasonal "let's learn COBOL" posts find a place here on HN.
I mean, yes, there's a challenge in navigating boring legacy COBOL banking systems, which follow no conventions, were created before code versioning was a thing, or best practices for that matter. Yes, it's challenging and therefore of interest to hackers, but still...
... striking my fingers with a hammer is similarly interesting and challenging, but why would I want to do it?
- throwawayboise 5y agoI would not be so sure on the "follow no conventions, created before code versioning was a thing" COBOL shops in my (admittedly limited experience in the early 1990s) had conventions, standard skeleton code for various things (referred to as copybooks) and source code control of a sort (very centralized of course, since everything was centralized). They definitely had separated "regions" for dev, test, and production where I worked, and a process for moving code changes to production. In my experience (as a staff consultant with a major firm), if they had consultants building systems, they certainly had a defined methodology, as consulting firms love that. I'll grant that there may have been a wide range of variance on this sort of thing. Just as there is today in many shops. I'm also not trying to sell anyone on the idea. Going back to COBOL would be about the last thing I'd want to do personally, even if there were good money in it.
- the_af 5y agoInteresting. That wasn't my experience working at a bank, or my dad's, but it was the same bank ;)