https://www.wired.com/story/doge-rebuild-social-security-administration-cobol-benefits/
For reference, SSA has roughly twice as many lines of code written in COBOL as the Linux kernel has lines of code written in C.
this post was submitted on 29 Mar 2025
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I'm part of a project that does something extremely close to this in Germany. After two or three years we've barely scratched the surface. The complexity of such a system with the wide range of rules, regulations and best practices is mind bogging. Just reverse engineering the legacy system alone takes years.
I don't envy you. I learned cool in university and vowed to never touch it again. Without going into too much detail, what are some of the common problems?
It's the same problem as with any other software development: Politics (literally). Some decisions are made by people who are not qualified to make them. Because of the scale of the project, these decisions affect hundreds of devs across dozens of teams with millions of euros swinging one way or the other. Apart from that, when divide and conquer is done properly, the work of each individual team isn't too different compared to software development in commercial companies. Everything is a bit more relaxed, though. That can be a boon but can also be infuriating if you're waiting for licenses, hardware, or some team to act.