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.
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.
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.
I work at an insurance company, and our core business system is written in RPG. We are starting the process of splitting it up and modernizing it, but I suspect there will still be some RPG code running in production in ten years.
I wouldn’t be mad about it, I hear there’s big bucks in the arcane languages.
The money pays for an individual’s knowledge in the arcane language, rather than the fact they use it.
There is?
Where exactly?
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.
I’m in IT in the financial industry. There is indeed still a ton of COBOL around.
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.
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.
I work at an insurance company, and our core business system is written in RPG. We are starting the process of splitting it up and modernizing it, but I suspect there will still be some RPG code running in production in ten years.