This is what happens when writers of articles and editors have no clue what they are writing about.

I am confident NOBODY on the DOGE team that codes called COBOL a "Regimen". Having worked briefly with COBOL and PL/X (a custom variant of PL/1)... I have better names for cobol.

But good luck getting rid of it. (I remember opening a DB table, and seeing a group of 8 fields, repeated like 24 times in a row, numbered, and when I asked WTH? I was told. Oh, that's how COBOL stores an ARRAY of options. I said "Well it's ONE way to do it. And it's clearly wrong"... But the normal way takes too many I/O cycles, LOL).

So, the upside of the COBOL is that it is working.
After that. Ughh.

In my book, you add another language inside the cobol code, a more modern language, like Python.
Make them interoperate. And slowly rewrite the system into Pythonized COBOL. Until you have nothing but Python remaining. Then refactor it to normal.

Otherwise, having worked on huge code bases. Good luck. It aint moving unless you just write a new version and switch.

Meanwhile... CitiBank still using their COBOL screens! While you scan your card and type a pin into a machine.

My son and a couple of grandsons got into coding of one sort or another. Great grandsons are still too young. I have no granddaughters or great granddaughters, :-(

I never pushed him, but my son sort of followed my steps into IT. When I look at what he knows, what he can do, and at the tools he uses, I have to think that the time and efforts that you, FFA, I, and all the others put in was well worth it.

To rainman and FFA: Don't know whether to sing "Thanks for the memories" or "Those were the days". Although I was always a side show of the big show, I can't help but think I contributed a little something to where the kids are now. I still do a little coding in my workshop fooling with Python on a Raspberry Pi I'm totally out of the industrial stream (though I still get contacted now and then). I'm more into growing strawberries and tomatoes, LOL!

I was one of probably 10 or 15 people in the world who preferred Macro Level CICS instead of Command Level CICS. Loved seeing what went on behind the scenes. Speaking of JCL...how much fun was it to slip in the occasional DD DUMMY into a JCL stream?

With COBOL, PL1, JCL and CICS for online stuff you could get a job anywhere. Now you HAVE to not only know some obscure language, but the exact version they have. Many years ago, I was turned down for an interview because I didn't have 5 years of .net experience..... .net was only released 2 years before. When I informed them of that they said.. "The job requires 5 years of experience"

Paper tape for me in '74, until that was followed by cards on another site in '76.
Like yours, that computer also had 64k of memory (and required a full floor of the building.)
We had to re-code overlays (running out of memory) to add capabilities that the original
designer hadn't considered when he designed it with an old college drinking buddy providing
the design requirements. ;^)

"Coding Regimen"?? That is a slap of reality! I agree - feelin' old.....

Paper tape for the high school programs, and IBM 028 card punches initially in college. The 028 didn't interpret; all it did was punch the square zone & digit holes. Had to interpret on another IBM machine. Then we went to the 128 card punch, and you entered your data, hit release, and the card slid through and punched & interpreted at the same time. Felt like we were living high on the hog!

LOL, Pong was fun, but got old fast. I cut my coding teeth using FORTRAN in '72 on a CDC 1704 mini computer that used core memory (yeah, iron donuts with wires through them). When it was scrapped in the late '70s I rescued an 8k byte core module, which is a bit larger than a cubic foot and weighs about 10 pounds. It's in my "man cave" as a remembrance. The system employed 8 of these modules to give it a total memory capacity of 64k bytes. We did a LOT with that machine. Oh, the mass storage was a pair of multi-platter CDC drives with a total of 2.5 mega bytes each. One was online live and the other was the backup. Programs were entered on punched cards or paper tape - WTF are those?!!! LMAO.

Edit add: Oh wait! I took a 3 month DP course in high school in '69 and was introduced to JPL and COBOL! Had to take a bus to a downtown location to time share on an IBM 360. (I think it was a 360) Forgot about that!

I'll go back even more...my first real program (to prove a mathematical theorem) as a junior in high school (spring '74, I think) was written in BASIC.

And you're right; without us oldies, the newbies wouldn't exist. As exhibit A, I give you: Pong.

Ha ha, I know how you feel, rainman0720. I'm an old FORTRAN coder myself. Just keep in mind without guys like us, they would never be.