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A COBOL programmer explains that this migration is impossible without catastrophe unless they want to destroy social security.
(lemmy.world)
this post was submitted on 29 Mar 2025
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It's theoretically possible that the code we are speculating on is more straightforward than we presume, but it's highly unlikely, particularly given how long lived there code is and, well, it's government and they rarely let things be simple.
The bigger question is what is the upside? This core system does the job. There's risk without any apparent benefit other than "this stuff seems old". Sure they can get away from IBM as the sole vendor of the hardware and software stack that can run it, but it's not with it.
This is awfully similar to how, upon getting control of PayPal, he declared they were going to modernize off of that old unix stuff onto slick new windows servers, and it was a disaster that had to be undone, among the various "leadership" moves that got him pulled from decision making at PayPal.