Case in point: Consider last year’s unexpected rush on COBOL programmers. Many government and financial systems still run on COBOL, even though most universities no longer include this half-century-old language in their CS curriculum. This turned out to be a huge problem for several legacy systems, which needed to be updated in response to the COVID pandemic. In order to take advantage of the CARES Act passed by Congress, state unemployment systems needed to be quickly updated to accommodate new rules and a massive influx of recipients. The state of New Jersey, however, found itself stymied through their reliance on a comparatively ancient codebase, which led the governor to publicly plead for COBOL-literate volunteers to update its infrastructure. Request Free! |