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Having worked on the PL/1 and Assembler that formed the core accounting systems of a bank: yes.

Not only did I have source control I had flow diagrams of the entire system for all points in the chain. My code reviews had me doing line-by-line justifications. I wrote tests.

Just because the technology and practitioners are old it doesn't mean they don't know what they're doing.

Generally they invented whatever "you" are reinventing the first time around.



COBOL was used for more mundane tasks - a lot of data loading, formatting, batches of all kinds. Not all of which seemed so important when they were written, but that ended up being a plug nobody wants to take the risk of disconnecting.....


If they're still run, they're still important if not crucial.

I don't think they do data loading and batch processing on stuff they don't need.


Exactly. But sometimes they were built as a "quick patch, we'll do this right later" and then improved and changed and.... you see the picture.


> Just because the technology and practitioners are old it doesn't mean they don't know what they're doing.

I certainly didn't mean to imply that. It's more that many people now don't do a good job with that stuff, so I was curious if it would have been better then.




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