this post was submitted on 28 Jan 2024
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[–] brsrklf@jlai.lu 12 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

It's been a while since I was told this, so not sure how true it still is, but there a was a niche but lucrative market for people who could maintain stuff in Fortran, COBOL and the like.

Because there were some critical antediluvian pieces of software in banking, big businesses, etc that some companies were terrified of having to replace one day.

I'd expect that by now most would have migrated to more common languages, but I don't really know.

[–] yggdar@lemmy.world 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I'm in IT in the financial industry. There is indeed still a ton of COBOL around.

[–] brsrklf@jlai.lu 3 points 2 years ago

I guess some things never change, quite literally.

I've only worked for a bank for a few months, and it was on a new service project, so no idea what made the old finance workflows tick. For all I know it was the same there.

[–] noerdman@feddit.de 2 points 2 years ago

I heard that story, too... When I started studying. That was almost 20 years ago. I'd have assumed they had moved on until now if that hadn't been an urban myth in the first place.