alt Hacker NewsOh, btw, COBOL has the 2038 problem and it is right around the corner. We're going to need A LOT of new COBOL engineers to fix it. It runs so much of our world. We managed to save the world from Y2K in the nick of time. But, I'm not sure if we're going to have the minds necessary to solve 2038 by then as the can has just been kicked down the road without consideration. If anyone is worried there won't be jobs, there WILL be jobs.
Not to be too macabre, but we need to transfer the knowledge while the people who have it are still alive, can remember and can teach others to pick up the torch. And, let us call it was it is, of those remain and still have the desire to make the effort to transfer that knowledge.
It is easy to look back on y2k and think well that wasn't a big deal, but the only reason it wasn't is because people tirelessly worked to stop it. It is a testament to their success.
Regarding y2k Robert Bemer tried to warn people in 1971, with 29 years left to go. And, Peter de Jager published his attention-getting article "Doomsday 2000," in 1993 (in Computerworld), with a mere 7 years left which finally put the fire under everyone's ass. Keep in mind, there were still many original COBOL programmers and mainframe experts left to talk to at that time. And, there was a lot less code to change back then than there is now.
Voting tabulation, insurance, utilities, administrative systems, banking, ATMs, travel, healthcare, social security, point of sale, IRS, pension funds, TACTICAL NUKES, hotel bookings and payroll programs. More than 800 billion lines of COBOL code in production systems in daily use. For better or worse, it is the very bedrock of our modern society.
If you want to replace it with something that you want to maintain instead, that's fine too but we're running out of time.
"Danger, Will Robinson! DANGER!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWwOJlOI1nU
"Listen the nothing will be here any minute. I will just sit here and let it take me away too. They look... like... big... strong hands.... Don't they?" https://youtu.be/symP4QT7wLU?feature=shared&t=24
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This sounds interesting, but I wonder who this message needs to be directed to? As a dev who doesn't work there, I can't just go "fix 2038 for the post office." Are you encouraging devs like me to go try to get themselves hired into these positions now, and advocate allocating resources to fix these problems? Are you trying to tell the higher-ups at these places about a problem they might not know about?
Forgot to mention the post office. And, there are probably many more.
> we need to transfer the knowledge while the people who have it are still alive
Nah. We need to not transfer that knowledge, because the problem will be solved when the house is on fire.
But do not worry : nothing will happen until then. If those people cared, they would work to replace all that cruft, not enhance it to fix 2038.