Code as Infrastructure
A few months ago, I was asked if there were any older technologies other than COBOL where we were in serious danger of running out of talent. They wanted me to talk about Fortran, but I didn’t take the bait. I don’t think there will be a critical shortage of Fortran programmers now or at any time in the future. But there’s a bigger question lurking behind Fortran and COBOL: what are the ingredients of a technology shortage? Why is running out of COBOL programmers a problem?
The answer, I think, is fairly simple. We always hear about the millions (if not billions) of lines of COBOL code running financial and government institutions, in many cases code that was written in the 1960s or 70s and hasn’t been touched since. That means that COBOL code is infrastructure we rely on, like roads and bridges. If a bridge collapses, or an interstate highway falls into disrepair, that’s a big problem. The same is true of the software running banks.
Join the O'Reilly online learning platform. Get a free trial today and find answers on the fly, or master something new and useful.
