Discussion
Loading...

#Tag

Log in
  • About
  • Code of conduct
  • Privacy
  • About Bonfire
gordoooo_z
gordoooo_z
@gordoooo_z@polymaths.social  ·  activity timestamp 4 days ago

@kkarhan @rl_dane @fuchsiii Not to mention the countless companies still running ancient AS400 software in VMs (Costco, for one). This will forever delight me.


...and the endless lines of COBOL still handling god only knows how much of North American banking/financial infrastructure. This will forever shock and horrify me lmao

Kevin Karhan :verified:
Kevin Karhan :verified:
@kkarhan@infosec.space replied  ·  activity timestamp 4 days ago

@gordoooo_z @rl_dane @fuchsiii same in #Europe...

  • I literally withnessed a #COBOL programmer tweeting at his mother that he debugged her code...

Giving "Project Inheritance" a new meaning...

  • Copy link
  • Flag this comment
  • Block
Witchzilla boosted
Elizabeth K. Joseph
Elizabeth K. Joseph
@pleia2@floss.social  ·  activity timestamp 4 days ago

I am either famous or infamous for liking #COBOL 😂

But I'm doubling down and re-posted an archived blog post from 2023 with some additional commentary about taking the the "Learning COBOL Programming with VSCode" course: https://princessleia.com/journal/2026/01/on-cobol/

Featuring @waltman @adventofcomputing (and others who aren't on Mastodon)

https://princessleia.com/journal

On COBOL

I like COBOL. Screenshot from The Open Mainframe Project COBOL Programming Course (source) My exposure to it prior to entering the mainframe world almost seven years ago was quiet limited. My friend Walt Mankowski has worked with COBOL over the years, and I’d been to a few talks of his talks that would recount stories […]
  • Copy link
  • Flag this post
  • Block
Elizabeth K. Joseph
Elizabeth K. Joseph
@pleia2@floss.social  ·  activity timestamp 4 days ago

I am either famous or infamous for liking #COBOL 😂

But I'm doubling down and re-posted an archived blog post from 2023 with some additional commentary about taking the the "Learning COBOL Programming with VSCode" course: https://princessleia.com/journal/2026/01/on-cobol/

Featuring @waltman @adventofcomputing (and others who aren't on Mastodon)

https://princessleia.com/journal

On COBOL

I like COBOL. Screenshot from The Open Mainframe Project COBOL Programming Course (source) My exposure to it prior to entering the mainframe world almost seven years ago was quiet limited. My friend Walt Mankowski has worked with COBOL over the years, and I’d been to a few talks of his talks that would recount stories […]
  • Copy link
  • Flag this post
  • Block
Cory Doctorow
Cory Doctorow
@pluralistic@mamot.fr  ·  activity timestamp 5 days ago

Code is a liability (not an asset). Tech bosses don't understand this. They think AI is great because it produces 10,000 times more code but that means it's producing 10,000 more liabilities. AI is the asbestos we're shoveling into the walls of our high-tech society:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/27/econopocalypse/#subprime-intelligence

--

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/06/1000x-liability/#graceful-failure-modes

1/

https://pluralistic.net

Pluralistic: Code is a liability (not an asset) (06 Jan 2026)

1 more link(s)
A shredder, shredding a giant US$100 bill. Benjamin Franklin's head has been replaced with a cliched 'hacker in a hoodie' illustration. The machine's faceplate bears the Claude Code wordmark. The background is the hostile red eye of HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.'

Image:
Cryteria (modified)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en
A shredder, shredding a giant US$100 bill. Benjamin Franklin's head has been replaced with a cliched 'hacker in a hoodie' illustration. The machine's faceplate bears the Claude Code wordmark. The background is the hostile red eye of HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.' Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en
A shredder, shredding a giant US$100 bill. Benjamin Franklin's head has been replaced with a cliched 'hacker in a hoodie' illustration. The machine's faceplate bears the Claude Code wordmark. The background is the hostile red eye of HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.' Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en
Marty Heyman at COBOLworx
Marty Heyman at COBOLworx
@martyh@cobolworx.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 5 days ago

@pluralistic of course, Corey, that makes vast quantitites of "mission" critical lines of code "liabilities." Hundreds of billions of lines of production #COBOL code for example.

But that's a glib misdirction. Lines of code, human or AI generated, that are in production are both a liability and a responsibility. So if you promote slop or carefully engineered code, you own it and it owns you.

  • Copy link
  • Flag this comment
  • Block

BT Free Social

BT Free is a non-profit organization founded by @ozoned@btfree.social . It's goal is for digital privacy rights, advocacy and consulting. This goal will be attained by hosting open platforms to allow others to seamlessly join the Fediverse on moderated instances or by helping others join the Fediverse.

BT Free Social: About · Code of conduct · Privacy ·
Bonfire social · 1.0.1-beta.22 no JS en
Automatic federation enabled
Log in
  • Explore
  • About
  • Code of Conduct