With the current uptick in interest in the ageing population … of the handful still capable of hardcore manual programming of COBOL, as e.g., here, I wondered:
- Is the code base still so enormously biased to COBOL(-based! software)?
- Why haven’t COBOL-to-e.g., C, or others converters, not caught on widely so the ‘problem’ doesn’t exist anymore ..?
Especially the latter; especially since we still have tons, too many (?), programmers available to tackle C- and more modern-language scrutiny and optimisation jobs. Jobs; high-pay jobs. And automatic testers to compare absolute 1-to-1 identity of the functionality or tractable lists of boundary conditions (possibly differing).
But with so many more (modern) code/functionality maintenance tools and capabilities available. And with integration/migration to (even) newer integrated platforms available.
And, when things get tough, AI that should be easily trainable to get to the hard, core bugs (higher abstraction sense) before/after the translation(s).
So, what’s the deal? The only deal there is, is (and was, having lost a long time) the lack of forward-looking maintenance to have already started early on modernisation. Yes, of course, there’s Not On My Watch and Après Nous Le Déluge. But real leaders would cut through that; that’s what distinguishes them from mere shopkeeper ‘managers’.
All right. Leaving you with:
[Impossible to guess I guess. Where?]
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