my country went through it - i don’t remember energy shortages but the food shortages were real. That systemic mismanagement over decades with fudged performance figures up and down piled up so high it’s a miracle things weren’t worse. Took a solid decade just to clean this mess

that word is so loaded for me - literally every time someone uses it regardless of context I remember The Godwinns theme and feel really old.

Wired clickbait, sigh

I see. Thanks for clarification. I never worked with COBOL myself but have couple of folks on the team who worked with COBOL in banking back during 2000s who still have full-on vietnam flashbacks over it. I guess the COBOL they worked with was an older iteration than you described.

my only experience with it was for code cleanup - since those tools save me from bitching and moaning from the team - let it rip

Even last year I would’ve said “hold ya horses, pardner” but these days I think you’re onto something. The way big tech keeps on screwing everybody while other parts of the economy actively sink is concerning.

You sir are hardcore.

It has its moments, but you are absolutely right - 25 years ago Wired would’ve torn modern Wired a new one for their clickbait speculative thinkpieces.

you can maintain make-believe “all good nothing to see here” for only so long until the reality becomes undeniable. given that cost of living crisis is already running roughshod through the economy - it’s not a good sign and it will get worse.

Its Freemium, at least it was like that. Using COBOL should be regulated by Geneva conventions at this point.

nowhere, I just relayed my personal observation regarding vibe coding in Ukraine as one of the examples

Wired pushing corporate agenda is happening.

PASCAL!

yikes

very apt comparison

those businesses are not really the target audience for Ukrainian outsourcing companies though. they want the big bucks nice and easy and cut corners more than they should in many cases. On the other hand - there are many Ukrainian small businesses that benefitted greatly from no-code and vibe coding tools that handle their small scale needs - that kind of streamlining helped them focusing on what actually affects their business on the ground

It’s only the best option if you are a grifter or grifting the grifter. vibe coding is running roughshod the outsourcing industry. Lots of companies started using it to produce basic throwaway apps and slowly but surely degrades developer’s talent pool. now we get lots of low-grade “developers” who can write prompts and want big bucks for it but can’t pass a mid-level live coding session because their skills are not up the snuff.

Facts

it is like that with a lot of Ukranian startups - hotshot all the way then sell off and it fucks shit up for others who actually want to turn their startups into a long-running expanding businesses.

don’t worry the military tech bubble will get it covered)

jokes aside - i’m working in consulting and lots of those AI startups are straight up money laundering operations that don’t really need neither market research nor talent pool studies - pretty much everything is for show and next to zero real longterm planning. A rude awakening is long overdue for these hotshots.

One time I had a misfortune to ask what one of these startups is going to do when their product will fail to gain traction (it was yet another grammar check sentence finishing app like Grammarly) - how are they gonna pivot and their CEO laughed at me and said “we are going to work hard to make it a success” which is like super stupid thing to say when your project is in the superoversaturated market affected by cost of living crisis with customer engagement on a consistent decrease for the last 3 years and your product costs almost the same as the market leader but is also way worse.