• Patapon Enjoyer@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Critical government services running COBOL. Programs stored in magnetic tapes, entire offices dependant on one guy who’s retiring. All that code will be lost in time, like tears in rain

    • TheLameSauce@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      There is genuine money to be made in learning the “dead languages” of the IT world. If you’re the only person within 500 Miles that knows how to maintain COBOL you can basically name your price when it comes to salary.

      I just wish I had the slightest interest in programing

      • cm0002@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        I’ve seriously looked into picking one of these dead languages up and honestly, it’s not worth it.

        Biggest issue is, you have to be experienced to some degree before you get the name your price levels. So you’ll have to take regular ol average programmer pay (at best) for a language that’s a nightmare in 2023. Your sanity is at heavy risk.

        I’d honestly rather bash my head with assembly, it’s still very much in use these days in a modern way. Most programs still get compiled into it anyway (Albeit to a far more complicated instruction set than in the past) and can still land some well paid positions for not a whole lot of experience (relatively)

        • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          1 year ago

          I’ve been meaning to learn Fortran in part because because of the whole “big bucks for being willing to maintain old software” thing, but mostly because I’d like to work on the sorts of scientific computing software that was (and still often is) written in Fortran.

  • Droggelbecher@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    I work in an astrophysics department and this is exactly why we almost exclusively use open source software

  • DpZer0126@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    This post is so true. I work in local government in a state that has TONS of money, yet our systems to control the information for agents to determine if you keep your kids or not is still based on MS-DOS. it’s insane to see in 2023

  • morrowind@lemmy.mlEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    Highly agree with the first point, companies should not be able to hold exclusive rights to any product they no longer provide support for.

    Abandonware and unsold products are one of the few cases in which I consider piracy ethical