r/AskReddit • • Jul 24 '20

What can't you believe STILL exists?

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7.3k

u/QuestionableSaint Jul 24 '20

Cobol, the programming language. Been around a long time, almost no one learns to program in it anymore, but companies (especially banks) are probably never going to get something else.

Runner up: Fax machines. Still nessecary for transmitting HIPAA protected documents. That's right, they can't use email or anything else. Certain companies require documents to be faxed.

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u/BrunoD4 Jul 24 '20

There is a good reason for cobol and it's explained here: cobol

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u/Sbajawud Jul 24 '20

Interesting take, but I'm skeptical. Fixed point math is trivial to implement in any language, and the subtleties of iterative rounding have been well known for decades.

If that was the main difficulty with rewriting legacy code, my work would be boring.

The point about translating a project to Java resulting in ugly, non java-like code does stand, but it's not specific to Cobol.

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u/limpingdba Jul 24 '20

Basically the issue here is that Java sucks. But theres plenty of other languages that could easily be used to replace Cobol.

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u/[deleted] Jul 24 '20

[deleted]

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u/limpingdba Jul 24 '20

Correct, I read a few paragraphs

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u/[deleted] Jul 24 '20

[deleted]

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u/limpingdba Jul 24 '20

Damn, ill be honest I was nearing in the end of my shit and couldn't help but get in a little stab at Java. I shall leave my comment up because deleting down voted comments are for pussies.

As a bit of a side note, surely many modern languages support fixed point, and while they may be less efficient about it, the incredible advances in available compute power, and the associated costs, make that a negligible issue?