An Apology to COBOL: Old Technology Isn’t Always Bad COBOL is a 50-year-old programming language that some say government should get away from. But it could still have a place in modern IT organizations. Ben Miller, Government Technology | March 11, 2021 | Opinion
In April 2020, New Jersey’s governor, Phil Murphy, stepped up to a microphone and told journalists that he was amazed the state still ran its unemployment system on COBOL a 60-year-old programming language. The state was having trouble keeping up with the massive surge of unemployment insurance applications coming in amid pandemic lockdowns, and it needed volunteers who knew that archaic language to use its own decrepit technology!
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An Apology to COBOL: Maybe Old Technology Isn’t the Real Problem
COBOL is a 50-year-old programming language that some say government should get away from. But it could still have a place in modern IT organizations. Shutterstock.com
In April 2020, New Jersey’s governor, Phil Murphy, stepped up to a microphone and told journalists that he was amazed the state still ran its unemployment system on COBOL a 60-year-old programming language. The state was having trouble keeping up with the massive surge of unemployment insurance applications coming in amid pandemic lockdowns, and it needed volunteers who knew that archaic language to use its own decrepit technology!
The more software eats the world, the more critical safety is … but what exactly does that mean?
Hacker image by catalyststuff
Software engineers are bad at safety because software engineers are not used to the idea that software can injure. All around the industry, the mantel of technical leadership has been passed to people about my age, perhaps a few years older. We grew up when computers weren’t so powerful, when their use was an optimization rather than a necessity, when their first commercial successes were in toys. We don’t think about safety as being a relevant issue for software, and we need to change our perspective on that.