• driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.brEnglish
    1·
    8 months ago

    Kinda related, in the company I used to work everything was done in SAS, an statistical analysis software (SAS duh) that fucking sucks. It’s used to be great, but once your on their environment you are trapped for fucking forever. I hated it and refuse to learned it over what was basic for my daily tasks. A couple of months I moved to another company that used to pay a consulting firm for my job, so my boss and me had to start everything fresh and the first thing we did was to study what are going to use as statistics software and I fight tooth and nails for Python and one of the points I pushed was that if in the future we decide to move out of Python we could easily can do it, while other solutions could locked up us with them.

  • Patapon Enjoyer@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    8 months ago

    I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Critical government services running COBOL. Programs stored in magnetic tapes, entire offices dependant on one guy who’s retiring. All that code will be lost in time, like tears in rain

    • TheLameSauce@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      8 months ago

      There is genuine money to be made in learning the “dead languages” of the IT world. If you’re the only person within 500 Miles that knows how to maintain COBOL you can basically name your price when it comes to salary.

      I just wish I had the slightest interest in programing

      • cm0002@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        8 months ago

        I’ve seriously looked into picking one of these dead languages up and honestly, it’s not worth it.

        Biggest issue is, you have to be experienced to some degree before you get the name your price levels. So you’ll have to take regular ol average programmer pay (at best) for a language that’s a nightmare in 2023. Your sanity is at heavy risk.

        I’d honestly rather bash my head with assembly, it’s still very much in use these days in a modern way. Most programs still get compiled into it anyway (Albeit to a far more complicated instruction set than in the past) and can still land some well paid positions for not a whole lot of experience (relatively)

        • Technus@lemmy.zipEnglish
          1·
          8 months ago

          Yeah everytime someone says “just learn COBOL, you’ll make tons of money,” it’s like,

          Bro.

          There’s a reason no one wants to write new software in these languages anymore, let alone maintain a forty-year-old pile of technical debt.

        • SamirCasino@lemm.eeEnglish
          1·
          8 months ago

          Been working in COBOL for a decade and this is all true.

          I’m lucky. I personally enjoy it. But i can totally see how it’s an absolute nightmare for most people.

  • DpZer0126@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    8 months ago

    This post is so true. I work in local government in a state that has TONS of money, yet our systems to control the information for agents to determine if you keep your kids or not is still based on MS-DOS. it’s insane to see in 2023

  • Droggelbecher@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    8 months ago

    I work in an astrophysics department and this is exactly why we almost exclusively use open source software

  • morrowind@lemmy.mlEnglish
    0·
    8 months ago

    Highly agree with the first point, companies should not be able to hold exclusive rights to any product they no longer provide support for.

    Abandonware and unsold products are one of the few cases in which I consider piracy ethical

    • psud@aussie.zoneEnglish
      1·
      8 months ago

      Publishers and film makers too. Keep it in print or lose rights (though I’d rather have much shorter copyright periods). Changed products get their own copyright, but the old version falls out if you stop selling it.