I retired at the end of 2021 after a 45-year career as an application programmer. I only used two languages during those 45 years: PL/1, and COBOL. I don’t think anyone uses PL/1 anymore (which is a shame, as I understood it more than I understood instructions for making toast), but according to http://zdnet.com, there are still an estimated 800 billion lines of COBOL code being used every minute of every day.

So in reading an article about the SSA dashboard being less user-friendly than it used to be (due to some self-service things being removed), I saw this little gem:


“DOGE also has sought to upgrade and update SSA technology systems, including a coding regimen called "COBOL" that goes back to the 1950s.”


"Coding regimen"? They didn't even have the courtesy or respect to call it a programming language.

Makes me feel real old.