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Comment by goodpoint | Hacker News Reader

Some banks tried to jump on the Java bandwagon when it was the hyped up thing of the moment and now many are going back to COBOL.

> HTML+JS+NodeJS seems the most likely candidate IMO

So that my bank can run npm install leftpad on their payment processors.

Please tell me this is parody.

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> Some banks tried to jump on the Java bandwagon when it was the hyped up thing of the moment and now many are going back to COBOL.

What's wrong with Java that COBOL doesn't suffer from exactly?

Hah, well, right. I just meant from a longevity standpoint. What stack can I use today that is and will continue to be well supported for 30+ years?

C, C++, probably Rust, various other relatively boring languages.

If Node.js is even still used in 30 years it won't look anything like today's Node.js.

I've converted some legacy apps into, not a joke, PHP3. In like 2006-8. So, PHP3 still works this many years later (in VMs). Currently working to migrate to PHP7.

It's just moving business data into and out of, in many cases still file based records (but maybe we can upscale to SQL). So, if you can read the COBOl and implement correctly in the next blessed language (with tests).

Harder part is to meet the folks that can get you those gigs than actually doing the gigs.

Come on, are you serious? COBOL is still being used exactly because it does not have a high-churn ecosystem. Same for C and C++.

Of all languages, js is by far the most volatile.

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