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I was talking to someone about it, and he claims that he is a programmer who still is able to program in old languages, because hackers these days aren't able to crack the code.

He works for a gigantic bank, as an information security person. The fact that he believes old languages are immune to hackers these days are a little bit simplistic.

Haven't those languages evolved to more sophisticated ones, because those had flaws? I mean serious security holes?

I'm curious to know if those old languages are still in use for more than a hobby?

schroeder
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Sam B
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    None of what this person said makes sense. That's not how any of this works. – Stephen Touset Mar 31 '21 at 20:37
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    "I'm curious to know if those old language are still in use for more than a hubby" - there is definitely legacy code in use which is written in older languages, which also needs to be maintained in these old languages. They might be more secure since the programs at these times were less complex and had less dependencies. These programs might also be used in more controlled environments with more trusted user input, i.e. not exposed to the web or similar. Still, I think the question is too vague and answers will be primarily based on opinions. It is not even clear what "old" really means. – Steffen Ullrich Mar 31 '21 at 20:48
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    Here is one reason banks still use COBOL, and it has nothing to do with security. https://medium.com/the-technical-archaeologist/is-cobol-holding-you-hostage-with-math-5498c0eb428b – Xander Mar 31 '21 at 20:58
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    They are "immune" not because FORTRAN is unbreakable or hackers cannot undestand COBOL. It's because they almost exclusively run on IBM zOS, and breaking RACF (zOS Resource Access Control) is not an easy task. – ThoriumBR Mar 31 '21 at 21:02
  • Sounds like it was meant as a joke. A way to bring levity to the conversation. – phbits Mar 31 '21 at 21:40

2 Answers2

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because hackers these days aren't able to crack the code

False. That's an old programmer wanting to feel special and unique.

old languages are immune to hackers

False on its face. Old languages had hackers, too.

Haven't those languages evolved to more sophisticated ones, because those had flaws?

No, because newer tools allowed for different use cases. That's the reason why new languages are made.

old languages are still in use for more than a hobby

Of course. Massive systems, especially in banks, are built on those old languages. They are slowly migrating.

schroeder
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There are companies that still use relatively old programming languages like COBOL. PL/1, FORTRAN. There are different reasons for this.

There are modern development tools that simplify work with these languages, for instance such tools can generate Java code that is needed to integrate a Java application with a particular COBOL application. There are also transaction managers that allow to use COBOL and Java functionality within a single transaction.

Means, old programming languages are not necessarily a hobby.

Particular programming languages or platforms are chosen usually not because of security aspects. For choice of the platform can be important the ease of development, flexibility, extensibility, possibility to reuse the code, maintainability, costs of development. Security aspects can also be important, but this is not a single and often not a major factor.

hft
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mentallurg
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