• Pons_Aelius@kbin.social
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    8 months ago

    I believe you. I can even guess the story.

    In the late 80s/early 90s a staff member (self taught in office/access) quickly threw together something at the request of a manager as a stop gap wile a new proper system was specked out.

    The person learned as they went and the system grew in functionality and complexity until the term spaghetti code was a massive understatement. It became their job.

    The new proper system never arrived and they have been making do for the past 30-40 years.

    I ran into the same thing a decade or so ago and it was a nightmare, but it was just an ice cream franchise, not prison related

    • interolivary@beehaw.org
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      8 months ago

      Even though I occasionally toy with the idea of learning eg. COBOL so I could rake in the $$$ from consulting jobs to add features to some 60 year old codebase for a bank or something like that, I’m not sure that amount of stress would ever be worth it