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by romanovcode 335 days ago
> There are a large number of contractors from Indian consulting companies with "experience in cobol" to make run of the mill cobol cheap enough.

Seeing the horrible performance from Indian offshore firms with modern languages I cannot imagine the mess they make with legacy languages like Cobol. Or is it the other way around?
1 comments
devwastaken 335 days ago
Corps operate despite inefficiency not because of efficiency. LLC protection and market control are everything.
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FredPret 334 days ago
But the code still has to work. LLC's and other corporate structures only protect the owners if the company goes bankrupt, which it will if its systems stop working.

Ditto with market control, it's not some permanent crown you achieve. Companies have to keep performing to keep their market share.

E.g., if you opened an account at a major bank, and your transactions started failing, would you keep banking there?

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ch_123 334 days ago
> E.g., if you opened an account at a major bank, and your transactions started failing, would you keep banking there?

A lot of people who land in that situation do continue banking there since they are either tied into that bank through loans/debt, or lack the time/energy to move elsewhere.

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FredPret 334 days ago
This situation would lead to immediate and extremely severe legal and commercial consequences for the bank, even if it's JP Morgan.

The argument that a market leader can screw up because it "owns" the market is not correct. Where's Xerox / IBM / Intel now?

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