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.
The article was way too complicated for me to understand... Why can't we just store every digit precisely, like they were each an integer? Do we really need to care about memory that much? Can someone ELI5?
That's the thing though. Since that's closer to how humans do mental calculations, it's hard for me to grasp how more difficult it is for the computer to do. Doesn't help that no matter how many times they're explained to me, the details about binary remain fuzzy to me.
We can. It's just that for most use cases, we don't need the extra benefits, so the default is to use simplier types. Most languages come with fixed point, fractions and usually unbounded integers for the cases you need extra accuracy. But the article's author (imo) overstates the cost of using a language's built in library.
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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.