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by pavlov 489 days ago
But then he goes around saying he actually found massive evidence of fraud. It’s not like he tweets: “Guys, my admittedly cursory examination gave me a feeling this old system which I’ve never seen before could be prone to fraud.”

What proof does he (or you) even have that a COBOL system is particularly prone to fraud? The world’s most important banks still run many things on COBOL. Are you saying that bank mainframes are full of IT fraud?
1 comments
jamesrom 489 days ago
Who said a COBOL system is prone to fraud?

Incomplete and inaccurate data is prone to fraud. Talking about COBOL is missing the point.

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pavlov 489 days ago
The point is that a date set to 1875 is actually a null in COBOL.

It doesn't mean the data is missing or inaccurate, any more than a null reference in Java means your program is going to segfault. It simply indicates that the data is not present in this scope.

If Musk was posting: "Guys I just discovered they have tons of null checks in their code here, that's obviously an indication of fraud!" — would that make any sense to you?

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