# Our Government Runs on a 60-Year-Old Coding Language, and Now It’s Falling Apart

<https://onezero.medium.com/our-government-runs-on-a-60-year-old-coding-language-and-now-its-falling-apart-61ec0bc8e121>

- Host: [onezero.medium.com](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/hosts/onezero.medium.com/)
- Saved: April 9, 2020 (2020-04-10T01:56:54Z)
- Record: https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/6270f19c9201/
- JSON: https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/6270f19c9201.json

## What Jamie wrote

When society is faced with a new challenge that requires agility, technical legacy and inflexible systems that have received little to no investment cause a big problem.

> Today, nearly half the world’s banking systems run on COBOL, according to Reuters, and more than 80% of card-based transactions use the code.

Sure, lets get some COBOL folks on the problem, but then hopefully we can invest to keep us out of bad spots.

## Facts

- Kind: [Page](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/kinds/page/)

## Appears in

- [WT143: Weekly Thing #143 / Archetypes, Wear a Mask, Zoom](https://weekly.thingelstad.com/archive/143/), Recommended Links

## Same host

- [Ctrl-Alt-Delete: The Planned Obsolescence of Old Coders](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/542c3de977ef/) (onezero.medium.com, March 14, 2019)
- [Amazon Is Watching – OneZero](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/8a47249da3d8/) (onezero.medium.com, July 6, 2019)
- [Here’s What Those Phone Charging Lockers Are Doing With Your Personal Information](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/a18b6e4d9411/) (onezero.medium.com, August 13, 2019)
- [How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism, a New Book by Cory Doctorow | OneZero](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/7cc4617896e6/) (onezero.medium.com, August 26, 2020)

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## Elsewhere

- Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://onezero.medium.com/our-government-runs-on-a-60-year-old-coding-language-and-now-its-falling-apart-61ec0bc8e121