[alex-nt]

I keep hearing about these magical systems that work like clockwork, but I also work in a bank and the reality is very different. In a void, yes, those systems are amazing. Now add all the other systems that have to be linked with that and things start to turn into a nightmarish situation. All the new systems have to be contorted, twisted and designed in weird ways to accommodate the old ones. Everything works a bit worse just because there are a minority of systems that don't know UTF-8 for example, or can't send more than 16 bytes in a field. Banks are very bad at IT. If you don't work in the trading part of it you are seen as a necessary evil. These systems are still with us because banks are very risk averse and because decommissioning a system in a bank can take decades.

[pixl97]

If you think banks old software is bad, just wait till you see their newer stuff. The JSP I see dumped out there is just terrifying in many cases... and that's after security and code review.