Next time you laugh at musty old tech, remember that new technologies
are often built on it.
Caitlin Mooney is 24 years old and infatuated with technology that dates
to the age of Sputnik.
Mooney, a recent New Jersey Institute of Technology graduate in computer
science, is a fan of technologies that were hot a half-century ago,
including computer mainframes and software called COBOL that powers
them. That stuff won’t win any cool points in Silicon Valley, but it is
essential technology at big banks, insurance companies, government
agencies and other large institutions.
During Mooney’s job hunt, potential employers saw her expertise and
wanted to talk about more senior positions than she was seeking. “They
would get really excited,” Mooney told me. She’s now trying to decide
between multiple job offers.
The resilience of decades-old computing technologies and the people who
specialize in them shows that new technologies are often built on lots
of old tech.
When you deposit money using your bank’s iPhone app, behind the scenes
it probably involves computers that are the progeny of those used in the
Apollo moon missions. (Also, half-century-old computer code is baked
into the iPhone software.)
It’s often seen as a problem or a punchline that so much musty
technology is still around. But it’s not necessarily an issue.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/06/technology/cobol-jobs.html?smid=url-share
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