The Problem of Old Code and Older Coders

Legacy IT systems are everywhere—power grids, water treatment plants, telephone exchanges, and air traffic control, and so much more—and they need help

Show Notes

The coronavirus pandemic has exposed any number of weaknesses in our technologies, business models, medical systems, media, and more. Perhaps none is more exposed than what my guest today calls, “The Hidden World of Legacy IT.”

If you remember last April’s infamous call for volunteer COBOL programmers by the governor of New Jersey, when his state’s unemployment and disability benefits systems needed to be updated, that turned out to be just the tip of a ubiquitous multi-trillion-dollar iceberg—yes, trillion with ‘t’—of outdated systems. Some of them are even more important to us than getting out unemployment checks—though that’s pretty important in its own right. Water treatment plants, telephone exchanges, power grids, and air traffic control are just a few of the systems controlled by antiquated code.

 

In 2005, Bob Charette wrote a seminal article, entitled “Why Software Fails.” Now, fifteen years later, he strikes a similar nerve with another cover story that shines a light at the vast and largely hidden problem of legacy IT. 

What is Fixing the Future?

Fixing the Future from IEEE Spectrum magazine is a biweekly look at the cultural, business, and environmental consequences of technological solutions to hard problems like sustainability, climate change, and the ethics and scientific challenges posed by AI. IEEE Spectrum is the flagship magazine of IEEE, the world’s largest professional organization devoted to engineering and the applied sciences.