There‘s existing infrastructure, that runs on hardware from the 1980s. Especially in industrial applications there are still plenty of gigantic machines controlled by a 386 or a C-64.
The used vintage market can keep these running for a long time. Eventually you replace them with an emulator or an FPGA that runs the same software.
Big banking, insurance, airlines, shipping, governments, militaries bought huge IBM mainframes from the 1960s onwards. They ran for decades. Many of these were transformed into virtual machines, still running their ancient FORTRAN code.
There’s also the story of (IIRC Minutemen) nuclear missiles needing 5.25 floppies to program their guidance systems. These were still operational in the early 2000s. Lots of military weapons systems run on ancient hardware.
Banks, insurance, and aviation all run on very well-tested established code, and are very, very resistant to change.
But people who know cobol and fortran are getting fewer and further between, so they are slowly changing. Fortunately with modern software development practices, you can much more easily write verified software.
There‘s existing infrastructure, that runs on hardware from the 1980s. Especially in industrial applications there are still plenty of gigantic machines controlled by a 386 or a C-64.
The used vintage market can keep these running for a long time. Eventually you replace them with an emulator or an FPGA that runs the same software.
Big banking, insurance, airlines, shipping, governments, militaries bought huge IBM mainframes from the 1960s onwards. They ran for decades. Many of these were transformed into virtual machines, still running their ancient FORTRAN code.
There’s also the story of (IIRC Minutemen) nuclear missiles needing 5.25 floppies to program their guidance systems. These were still operational in the early 2000s. Lots of military weapons systems run on ancient hardware.
Don’t forget the IRS! They’ve been on 1980s equipment since…well…the eighties!
Banks, insurance, and aviation all run on very well-tested established code, and are very, very resistant to change.
But people who know cobol and fortran are getting fewer and further between, so they are slowly changing. Fortunately with modern software development practices, you can much more easily write verified software.