Why is COBOL Trending on Twitter?

I’m not going to lie, this is me every time “normies” realize how - let’s say interesting - government technology systems are.

One of my favorite weird Internet things is the John Titor mystery. “John Titor” was a man that posted on message boards around 20 years ago and claimed that he was a time traveler from 2038. Most people concentrate on his predictions, such as a second US Civil War, but the reason he came back? He needed some computer software from 1975 that was still in use in 2038.

Honestly, that tidbit almost makes me believe the whole thing.

So, back to COBOL. It is one of the original computer languages, first developed in the late 1950s. A sixty year old computer programming language was trending on twitter last night because

Yes, Government systems still use these languages. But at least the nuclear arsenal no longer requires floppy disks. Actually, a lot of technology and systems still rely on old stuff.

I don’t know enough to say outright whether or not using an older language is per se good or bad. But obviously when the system isn’t able to handle user needs, something is going wrong.

Over the past five years, I’ve had occasion to look at literally hundreds of court and legislative websites and court sponsored technologies. This is a problem that affects all levels and branches of government. This isn’t something that can be fixed by switching vendors or tools. The whole process of choosing and building technology needs to change. Waldo Jaquith, who I first “met” due to his free law work, now works for 18F. He wrote a guide on just that: