this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2023
35 points (97.3% liked)

Science Memes

11004 readers
3025 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.

Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.

Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
35
abandonware empires (mander.xyz)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
24 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Been working in COBOL for a decade and this is all true.

I'm lucky. I personally enjoy it. But i can totally see how it's an absolute nightmare for most people.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Yeah everytime someone says "just learn COBOL, you'll make tons of money," it's like,

Bro.

There's a reason no one wants to write new software in these languages anymore, let alone maintain a forty-year-old pile of technical debt.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 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.