Today I learned:
The IRS and Social security administration in the US still runs on COBOL, a programming language mostly abandoned since the late 70s.
COBOL is no longer taught in any substantial way at any college or university institutions.
The nerds that are maintaining these systems are geriatrics.
This is fine š¬
Have you heard about the āautomatedā clearing house that isnāt automated at all š https://www.npr.org/transcripts/229224964
Banks used to have people transporting crates of paper checks to physically exchange them with other banks so the funds could be settled between them once a week. Thatās the origin of the term āclearing house.ā
That's wild, you learn about more government incompetency every day
Many of our government, banking & telecommunications organizations are still using these old mainframe systems.
They're super fast & very robust but almost impossible to change now.
