Vintage Programmers Will Be Needed!

This topic has 6 replies, 3 voices, and was last updated 5 years, 4 months ago by Dave Rice.

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November 15, 2020 at 3:44 pm #63576
Ed P
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@edps
Forumite Points: 39
Apparently the Dept of Justice’s veteran systems written in Cobol, Pascal and Fortran are in danger of falling into disrepair. At least that is how it reads, as the Government have granted themselves an emergency contract waiver to CGI for the maintenance of such systems. link

Almost reads like my CV of 50 years ago!

(I racked my brains to think why the DoJ would use Fortran and came to the conclusion that it is supporting their Forensic Science Labs. Ditto Pascal but that is probably some ancient database applications)

Whatever the reason, there cannot be too many people in industry who are experienced in these old languages – pensioner’s pin money opportunities! :yahoo:
November 15, 2020 at 5:51 pm #63583
Dave Rice
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@ricedg
Forumite Points: 7
Interesting snippet later in the article, the Cabinet Office has banned IT Projects of >£100 million. Seems like a logical move but the law of unintended consequences leads to moves like this, contracts being extended for systems in desperate need of an upgrade.
November 15, 2020 at 11:28 pm #63587
Wheels-Of-Fire
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@grahamdearsley
Forumite Points: 4
There may still be a few new Pascal programmers in the pipeline.

A bloke I used to work with decided to take up a night school class in computer programming at his local collage a couple of years ago. His lecturer said they were lucky because they were going to be learning the most popular language used in industry. Err Pascal, in 2018 ?
November 16, 2020 at 7:14 am #63596
Ed P
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@edps
Forumite Points: 39
” Err Pascal, in 2018 ?”

Probably Delphi – it still ranks in the top 20 or so of programming languages. Hard to say if is used very much in enterprises. I suspect that it is used for prototyping commercial solutions but, as Dave will probably confirm, prototypes have a horrible habit of morphing into long term solutions. Delphi does however have the advantage of being very readable (unlike C++) and is highly capable of writing efficient interface systems that incorporate in-line code.

During the 2010s Delphi was the Russian/Eastern Bloc hackers language of choice! :wacko:
November 16, 2020 at 8:59 am #63601
Wheels-Of-Fire
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@grahamdearsley
Forumite Points: 4
There is something to be said for retaining an incumbent maintainer, if you have been happy with their services, even if you end up paying a small premium. You ARE going to end up being more reliant on them than you probably should be but you are going to end up relying on SOMEONE and the grass is almost NEVER greener elsewhere in the case of complicated legacy systems. As the saying goes, you often don’t know what you’ve got till its gone 😁
November 16, 2020 at 9:03 am #63603
Wheels-Of-Fire
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@grahamdearsley
Forumite Points: 4
The same goes for outsourcing your IT provision in the first place of course 😃
November 16, 2020 at 9:14 am #63605
Dave Rice
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@ricedg
Forumite Points: 7
Outsourcing is done to cut costs, end of.
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