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canopic jug [soylentnews.org] writes:

The magazine Logic has an article about the durability of COBOL [logicmag.io], which has been reliably running mission critical systems for over 60 years.

At the time of this writing, in July 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has killed over 133,000 people in the United States. The dead are disproportionately Black and Latinx people and those who were unable, or not allowed by their employers, to work remotely. During the pandemic, we’ve seen our technological infrastructures assume ever more importance—from the communications technology that allows people with the means and privilege to telecommute, to the platforms that amplify public health information or deadly, politicized misinformation. We’ve also seen some of the infrastructure that runs the social safety net break down under an increasing load. This includes state unemployment systems that pay workers the benefits they’ve contributed to for decades through taxes. In a global pandemic, being able to work from home, to quit and live on savings, or to be laid off and draw unemployment benefits has literally become a matter of life and death.

The cracks in our technological infrastructure became painfully evident in the spring, as US corporations responded to the pandemic by laying off more and more workers. So many people had to file for unemployment at once that computerized unemployment claim systems started to malfunction. Around the country, phone lines jammed, websites crashed, and millions of people faced the possibility of not being able to pay for rent, medicine, or food.

As the catastrophe unfolded, several state governments blamed it on aged, supposedly obsolete computer systems written in COBOL, a programming language that originated in the late 1950s. At least a dozen state unemployment systems still run on this sixty-one-year-old language, including ones that help administer funds of a billion dollars or more in California, Colorado, and New Jersey. When the deluge of unemployment claims hit, the havoc it seemed to wreak on COBOL systems was so widespread that many states apparently didn’t have enough programmers to repair the damage; the governor of New Jersey even publicly pleaded for the help of volunteers who knew the language.

But then something strange happened. When scores of COBOL programmers rushed to offer their services, the state governments blaming COBOL didn’t accept the help. In fact, it turned out the states didn’t really need it to begin with. For many reasons, COBOL was an easy scapegoat in this crisis—but in reality what failed wasn’t the technology at all.

Currently, over 40% of banking systems use it and 95% of ATM actions use it [thomsonreuters.com]. Institutions are now begrudgingly admitting that their problems are elsewhere and not with COBOL.

Previously:
(2020) IBM Scrambles to Find or Train More COBOL Programmers to Help States [soylentnews.org]
(2020) COBOL-Coding Volunteers Sought as Creaking Mainframes Slow New Jersey's Coronavirus Response [soylentnews.org]
(2019) COBOL Turns 60: Why It Will Outlive Us All [soylentnews.org]
(2018) Increased Demand for COBOL, Mainframe, and Legacy Storage Skills [soylentnews.org]

Original Submission