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A COBOL programmer explains that this migration is impossible without catastrophe unless they want to destroy social security.
(lemmy.world)
this post was submitted on 29 Mar 2025
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I don't get it..The old system is written in cobol, it stores data in a complex way built apoun years, and fo this reason to do simple thing its a pain in the ass ok. So one have to design a new system, with a "modern" technology approach, that doesn't need to be similar to the old, it has just to be good, safe easy to maintain. Then populate the new database from the Cobol's one (i have to know which kind and type of data i need in my new current system). run and test the new system as soon as everything works fine, then shutdown the old one. In the end it s not just extract all the data and inject it in the new system? Am i missing something?
I’m assuming you have never done any of those things. So yes, you’re missing quite a bit.
It's theoretically possible that the code we are speculating on is more straightforward than we presume, but it's highly unlikely, particularly given how long lived there code is and, well, it's government and they rarely let things be simple.
The bigger question is what is the upside? This core system does the job. There's risk without any apparent benefit other than "this stuff seems old". Sure they can get away from IBM as the sole vendor of the hardware and software stack that can run it, but it's not with it.
This is awfully similar to how, upon getting control of PayPal, he declared they were going to modernize off of that old unix stuff onto slick new windows servers, and it was a disaster that had to be undone, among the various "leadership" moves that got him pulled from decision making at PayPal.