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Any builder is 10x as productive when working with known tooling. Meanwhile, tooling that even makes you 5% more efficient is very rare. So the OP is very rig

Any builder is 10x as productive when working with known tooling. Meanwhile, tooling that even makes you 5% more efficient is very rare. So the OP is very right in his technology choices. I've seen a COBOL+assembly team run rings around teams with more modern tooling, producing guis that, while ugly as hell, were more productive than a modern HTML based interface. They know their tooling and business inside out, and that more than offset the fact that their tech was 50years stale.

agumonkey 4y ago
I've been looking for such teams for a long time. Can I interview them ? or work there ? if the company still exists.
- cpach 4y ago
  FWIW, there are banks out there that still use Cobol.
  - Gigachad 4y ago
    Even the banks are starting to move on. I’m seeing local banks now listing mostly python and some rust positions.
    - agumonkey 4y ago
      It would be interesting to see how they planned their migration. Wrapping or gradual replacement..
      - blowski 4y ago
        RPA. Get a tool like UIPath or BluePrism that writes to the legacy UI, then build modern tools that communicate with UIPath's API.
        agumonkey 4y ago
        wait so now mouse scripting is industrial business AI ?
        Nextgrid 4y ago
        Before mouse scripting, the AI would be a data entry drone somewhere in a boiler room, so I guess that's an improvement.
    - scrollaway 4y ago
      This can be misleading. Most local banks aren’t using the type of technology the bigger banks are, because those smaller banks tend to run on banking-as-a-service platforms. So the smaller banks are often essentially just proxies to larger ones.
  - agumonkey 4y ago
    Yeah I spent half my internship in a acquired COBOL shop, the thing is not all cobol is created equal and theirs was the sum of all evil (old debt, old code generators, less old 4GL transpilers, eclipse pluging glue code). I'm more interested into people from that era doing lean and mean apps. I've seen a few instances of AS400 and COBOL programs that gave me more joy than anything the web ever produced. And I assume Parent was talking about people doing similar things.
barbarbar 4y ago
Yes - It is VERY hard to beat a well made 3270 gui.

agumonkey 4y ago

I've been looking for such teams for a long time. Can I interview them ? or work there ? if the company still exists.

cpach 4y ago
FWIW, there are banks out there that still use Cobol.
- Gigachad 4y ago
  Even the banks are starting to move on. I’m seeing local banks now listing mostly python and some rust positions.
  - agumonkey 4y ago
    It would be interesting to see how they planned their migration. Wrapping or gradual replacement..
    - blowski 4y ago
      RPA. Get a tool like UIPath or BluePrism that writes to the legacy UI, then build modern tools that communicate with UIPath's API.
      - agumonkey 4y ago
        wait so now mouse scripting is industrial business AI ?
        Nextgrid 4y ago
        Before mouse scripting, the AI would be a data entry drone somewhere in a boiler room, so I guess that's an improvement.
  - scrollaway 4y ago
    This can be misleading. Most local banks aren’t using the type of technology the bigger banks are, because those smaller banks tend to run on banking-as-a-service platforms. So the smaller banks are often essentially just proxies to larger ones.
- agumonkey 4y ago
  Yeah I spent half my internship in a acquired COBOL shop, the thing is not all cobol is created equal and theirs was the sum of all evil (old debt, old code generators, less old 4GL transpilers, eclipse pluging glue code). I'm more interested into people from that era doing lean and mean apps. I've seen a few instances of AS400 and COBOL programs that gave me more joy than anything the web ever produced. And I assume Parent was talking about people doing similar things.

barbarbar 4y ago

Yes - It is VERY hard to beat a well made 3270 gui.