Social Security systems contain tens of millions of lines of code written in COBOL, an archaic programming language. Safely rewriting that code would take years—DOGE wants it done in months.
COBOL is perfectly suitable for financial purposes for which it was designed. The SSA code has gone through decades worth of changes and improvements that cannot be replicated even in 10 years.
COBOL is perfectly suitable for financial purposes for which it was designed.
Nobody uses COBOL for greenfield projects, even in the banking and financial sectors. And, as people with COBOL expertise die of old age, it becomes increasingly unmaintainable.
I bet is cheaper to teach it to new programmers than to rewrite old software. Just because a language is old doesn’t mean it is unlearnable or that software written in it needs to be rewritten.
COBOL is perfectly suitable for financial purposes for which it was designed. The SSA code has gone through decades worth of changes and improvements that cannot be replicated even in 10 years.
Nobody uses COBOL for greenfield projects, even in the banking and financial sectors. And, as people with COBOL expertise die of old age, it becomes increasingly unmaintainable.
I bet is cheaper to teach it to new programmers than to rewrite old software. Just because a language is old doesn’t mean it is unlearnable or that software written in it needs to be rewritten.