Is COBOL really that hard to understand? Fintech people talk about it like it's some esoteric thing that the gods left behind, that mere mortals cannot comprehend
Let me guess, those programs are actually full of clandestine backdoors and porting the software might blow their cover... right? Seems reasonable in this case they'd use AI to do a rewrite if they're trying to hide something, don't want any actual humans looking at how the sausage is made
@mdc
In a word, no. COBOL is not that hard to read.
Here's some example code: https://github.com/writ3it/cobol-examples?tab=readme-ov-file
Exactly, the whole COBOL is incomprehensible to modern programmers argument is total bunk. It's less the syntax and more cutting through the bewildering reams of unstructured code these legacy programs likely use that would slow people down. But, COBOL IDEs exist and have debuggers, someone could spend a few days stepping through a program and make sense of it
Matt
Chip Unicorn