• tiredofsametab@fedia.io
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      7 days ago

      I’ve fallen down the rabbithole. I’m reading a free course (from 2001ish) on Cobol.

      COBOL is Maintainable

      I now question everything. I mean, technically, basically anything is maintainable in that it’s possible…

      • esa@discuss.tchncs.de
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        7 days ago

        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, 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.