26 Dec
2012
26 Dec
'12
12:05 p.m.
Sigh, it seems that nothing's changed in the last
50 or so years.
Why anyone would want to write financial code in C++ is a little
beyond me. That being said, I recall a couple of financial
applications that *were* written in APL.
All in all, COBOL still isn't too bad for such stuff, no matter how
some people view it. The wonderful part is that it's just as
possible
to write crappy code in COBOL as it is in IPL-V.
All "financial code" is not the same. The stuff that tracks your
checking account is not the same (in requirements) as the stuff that
high frequency traders use (some of the examples of major issue wrought
by "poorly" written software fall into the latter category). Cobol
would be significantly out of place in an environment where microseconds
make a difference.
That said, I was highly disappointed in the article. Bottom line, real
world software sucks for myriad reasons. OK, fine, I think anyone who
has been in the industry for more than a few years already knows that.
I was kinda hoping that it would delve a bit more into the whole higher
ed to industry impedance mismatch that often occurs and how that might
be improved to help the overall state of software affairs. But alas
just a passing mention of higher ed and then 2 pages of rehash on what
makes software (and software engineers) suck.