I dont even program and i could've told them it was probably a placeholder or default value lol "durrrrrr lot of people in this database were born at the exact same time on the same day in the same year that predates electronic databases, gotta be fraud!!1!1!11"

More likely they nuke it due to that lack of understanding.

2016-2020 was the age of too stupid to break everything. Now we're staring down the barrel of "The files are in the computer?" But the entire US government is the computer.

They'd probably just delete the Cobol code since "nobody would use that old stuff anyway".

I don't know how many teenage programmers you have interacted with recently, but they are generally just learning the basics, learning core concepts, experimenting, etc...

There is a huge gap between making small, sometimes very cool and creative even, projects and understanding a giant legacy codebase in a language that is not taught anymore. I mean, even university grads often have trouble learning legacy code, much less in COBOL.

You wouldn't say your average teenage cook could make a gourmet meal for a house of 50 people 😅 not a dis, just they haven't had the time to get to greybeard level yet

How many teens you think can actually read and understand legacy languages like FORTRAN and COBOL? Let alone a complex codebase written in them?

I studied COBOL a bit in college and it's not exactly hard to read short snippets if you understand other languages, but good luck wrapping your head around anything remotely complex and actually understand what it is doing without having someone who understands the language. Hell, 15-20 years on and multiple languages later, my eyes still cross trying to read and grok COBOL. The people supporting those old code bases get paid well for a reason ...

I don't think the government uses COBOL. I know the government uses COBOL.

He would dismiss COBOL and try to prove that he is a super cool geek with a deep knowledge of DnD and gaming culture. So more like:

"COBOL? Such a language doesn't even exist unless you think Kobolds are real! Hahaha"

Not only do many important government systems ultimately rely on or make heavy use of COBOL...

So do many older private companies.

Like banks. Account balances, transactions.

Its actually quite a serious problem that basically nobody who needs to take seriously actually does.

Basically no one is taught COBOL anymore, but a huge amount of code that undergirds much of what we consider 'modernity' is written in COBOL, and all the older folks that actually know COBOL are retiring.

We're gonna hit a point where the COBOL parts of a system to be altered or maintained, and ... there just isn't anyone who actually knows how to do it.

115 sounds too late imo, payments should need manual verification way earlier

In the legacy world we just call it the HIGH_DATE constant.

These are the same interns that are pushing code in production, right?

What do you expect? most of the guys in "DOGE" weren't even alive on 9/11 I'm a bit surprised that they still have something in COBOL, maintenance probably costs o fortune, good luck finding young COBOL devs

Cant wait till 2038!

Less of a generational problem, more of an educational one. Selfish, badly educated grifters that got pushed into high offices can be of any age. Musk also didn't recognize SQL when he looked at it, which is arguably even more funny.

I'll wait until it get reposted on a platform that isn't doing revenue sharing with Nazis. You know, like myLemmy instance.