My guess is that they needed to update the online application to support the new legislation, that it is written in COBOL for CICS, that they negligently failed to require, or even allow, adequate documentation and that they're too cheap to maintain adequate staffing. There are other possibilities, but they all boil down to poor management or inadequate funding and have nothing to do with the choice of language. IMHO a decent programmer could quickly pick up enough COBOL, JavaScript or whatever to do a quick fix, even if the code wasn't as clean or efficient as he could have written with more experience. Overcoming a lack of good documentation, however, is something else. "Remember that after Heracles cleaned the Augean stables, he killed the man who asked him to do it." = Robert Townsend in "Up The Organization"
As you noted, overloading is an unrelated issue. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz http://mason.gmu.edu/~smetz3 ________________________________________ From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [[email protected]] on behalf of Bob Bridges [[email protected]] Sent: Monday, April 20, 2020 11:52 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Here we go again "A survey by The Verge found that at least 12 states still use COBOL in some capacity in their unemployment systems." Sounds to me like they contacted exactly 12 states, then. And I think I mentioned this before, and maybe someone pointed out I'd misunderstood but I don't remember: The problem is apparently the "online unemployment form...was overloaded and he’d need to file again". But the on-line application system would not have been written in COBOL, and if it was overloaded by too many people trying to use it at once it wouldn't be because of the language it's written in...would it? --- Bob Bridges, [email protected], cell 336 382-7313 /* I am pretty sure that, if you will be quite honest, you will admit that a good rousing sneeze, one that tears open your collar and throws your hair into your eyes, is really one of life's sensational pleasures. -Robert Benchley */ -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Paul Gilmartin Sent: Monday, April 20, 2020 15:17 Unemployment checks are being held up by a coding language almost nobody knows - The Verge https://secure-web.cisco.com/1ajZ8A8DWU_JeD8KKd47ZrMuG9LvAYBY3K4gbnNpr9imW-LKdPxhQUXn7CNONrMGOt7OXFNMjPa7Gj1I6EMxcqPmz3C2FkQ_bkVUtqvAtDiN024eyZTZBnkL5oGYDO-y7NPw4nBkoJWgZzf0rVjKYeuvJ3u6qlN8-eXl2c0jQDwUrW1ztLLwaOVlrHOI8PEPu5z724ZxcToE13cqXLb3U1bYIkDg2PcTb0QhjjizdZKf2dBDlLSBJUaB8mD7iEEB6A1wXWdD-5EcLOgG23_fXWOgsF4TLtLYDCq_vtpcFGKk7dtTmNHCkpH6ShtWkHJleorm5LtndIibPnA7Ry4uR_MMjkQHVmSi47nCM8OJhd1XWyrGkaOYyzqwzwuUUglKj8NS_SbFINKvu9nASvdPmUCovJ9FENRNBdmmi5zQchvloRrE___usno_jaUeMMm3zK2HzVLV6KQuUFv_Yw2QjvA/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theverge.com%2F2020%2F4%2F14%2F21219561%2Fcoronavirus-pandemic-unemployment-systems-cobol-legacy-software-infrastructure ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
