Foolish Economy, Dangerous Economy

Should we be so miserly?

Yesterday morning a friend sent this link: COBOL-coding volunteers sought as creaking mainframes slow New Jersey’s coronavirus response

My friend knows that I am old enough to have written some COBOL, although I remember nothing about it today.

I’m not very worried about this old code. COBOL is a simple language; the young bucks should have little problem understanding the logic. They’ll fix it without needing to drag in old codgers from nursing homes.

It’s going to be similar to the Y2K problem. Many people today think that was all a big hoopla about nothing. No planes fell from the sky, businesses did not collapse. Overblown journalism, they say and they’ll say the same about this someday. Y2K was nothing because thousands of people like me fixed it wherever we found it. We fixed code, so the disaster never happened. People will do the same thing here. Quietly, without applause, they will fix the code or replace it.

It’s policy

No, it’s not the COBOL that bothers me. That will sort out. It’s our policies, business and government, that are the real problem. We are cheap. We pinch pennies everywhere. I’ve seen plenty of that in my decades of computer system consulting. It’s driven by all consuming competition…