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It almost certainly would completely break thousands of functions that have those magic letters hard coded into them in fortran, cobol, C or whatever. You migh
by jki275 2y ago
It almost certainly would completely break thousands of functions that have those magic letters hard coded into them in fortran, cobol, C or whatever. You might even find that clever people back in the 70s used other ways of representing those letters so you can't even search for them.
I've worked on codebases like this -- I've seen it take a team of engineers years to add a single digit to an ID number in a multi-million LOC mixed language codebase that was written in the 60s.
It's not that it can't be done, it's that it costs millions of dollars and takes years and you're never sure it's actually done because nobody has ever written a single test for the system and if you tried that would take years as well.
- kgen 2y agoBut lots of airlines have come and gone or merged over the years and these systems would have already had to deal with new airlines codes?
- jki275 2y agoProbably true. But their own systems internally almost certainly have those magic letters hard coded in thousands of places.
- TSUTiger 2y ago100% facts. They do. In prior roles, I've worked at 2 of the largest US airlines that have gone through mergers. There are lots of hard-coded letters in decades-old code that help identify what's mainline, regional, and OA (other airline). We're talking everything from reservations (booking) to revenue recognition (flight departure). It would be no simple feat to upgrade the tech stack. Hell, some of the mergers are still lingering within the systems because airlines wanted to complete it quickly for the passengers. The backend, however, has band-aids all over the place.
- pixl97 2y agoAnd there is so much functional testing that needs to occur on systems boundaries. I'm just thinking of crazy things that happen often enough like luggage getting put on the wrong flight and shipped via another carrier via agreement.
- jki275 2y agoI can start to wrap my head around it a little bit, and if I were handed this task I'd run away screaming.