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this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2024
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Programming
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I always wonder if I should just learn COBOL and try to just do a few juicy contracts a year and focus on my other pursuits (farming and considering making a game, as well as vacation of course) the rest of the year.
Eevee's heteroglot entry for COBOL is interesting, coming from … practically anything else.
There's also someone doing AOC in ABAP (basically SAP COBOL) who posts over in the AOC subreddit. I've looked at them and ... mhm, I know some of these words!
I've fallen down the rabbithole. I'm reading a free course (from 2001ish) on Cobol.
I now question everything. I mean, technically, basically anything is maintainable in that it's possible...
I mean, the fact that more than half-century-old COBOL continues to be maintained does speak to the fact that it is maintainable. That might also be part of what makes COBOL painful to the average developer: You're not only dealing with a language that first appeared in 1959, designed for machines that were very different than modern computers; you're also dealing with over a half century of legacy code, including all that means for Hyrum's law.
Unfortunately maintainable and pleasant to work with are rather distinct concepts.