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

234 points _false | 1 comments | 18 Jul 25 13:05 UTC | HN request time: 0s | 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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coryrc ◴[18 Jul 25 16:42 UTC] No.44606819{3}[source]▶
OT: Do you know if was he being serious, joking, or "haha only serious" in the linked message?
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1. woodrowbarlow ◴[18 Jul 25 17:05 UTC] No.44607172{4}[source]▶
i think that's at least mostly serious. he's not a fan of syntax highlighting.

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