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Ask HN: Any active COBOL devs here? What are you working on?

234 points _false | 3 comments | 18 Jul 25 13:05 UTC | HN request time: 0.563s | source

COBOL legacy systems in finance and government are somewhat of a meme. However, I've never actually met a single person who's day job is to maintain one. I'd be curious to learn what systems are you working on?
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slowmotiony ◴[18 Jul 25 14:08 UTC] No.44604809[source]▶
I work with a lot of COBOL dinosaurs in the bank, I often like to watch them work on their 16-colors IBM z/OS host terminals, it's quite mesmerizing. Sometimes they show me some interesting code that was written before I was alive (I'm 36), or tell me stories about big mainframe incidents in the '80s, where they would get called in the middle of the night and flown to a different country to fix a bug because there was no remote desktop back then.
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ksherlock ◴[18 Jul 25 15:43 UTC] No.44606020[source]▶
Damn mainframe people flaunting their 16 colors like they're a peacock or something. Shit. We only had one color (and one absence of a color) and that was good enough.
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Cthulhu_ ◴[18 Jul 25 16:05 UTC] No.44606324[source]▶
16 colors is juvenile. When I was a child, I was taught arithmetic using colored rods. I grew up and today I use monochromatic screens.

(paraphrased: https://groups.google.com/g/golang-nuts/c/hJHCAaiL0so/m/kG3B...)

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1. coryrc ◴[18 Jul 25 16:42 UTC] No.44606819[source]▶
OT: Do you know if was he being serious, joking, or "haha only serious" in the linked message?
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2. wavemode ◴[18 Jul 25 17:04 UTC] No.44607148[source]▶
Most of the comments by everyone in that thread are sarcastic, and the tone of the thread is lighthearted.

Pike genuinely doesn't seem to care for syntax highlighting, though understands that his is a minority opinion.

3. woodrowbarlow ◴[18 Jul 25 17:05 UTC] No.44607172[source]▶
i think that's at least mostly serious. he's not a fan of syntax highlighting.

https://ctrl-c.us/posts/highlight