Is Your Next language Cobol?

摘要

In July, citing a budget shortfall, the Governor of California ordered the salaries of 170,000 State employees to be cut to the Federal minimum wage. Not so fast, said the State Controller. Because California's payroll systems are written in antiquated Cobol code, it would take six months to implement the change and nine months to restore salaries later. That's if we had the Cobol programmers to do the job, which we don't, because you fired them last week, Governor. And we can't hire them back because nobody's going to take a pay cut from Social Security to program Cobol for minimum wage. Government is our favorite spectator sport.