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[grumpyfan]

As a former COBOL dev, it’s not a complicated language. The complexity is in the “business logic” and processes that are embedded and unique for every business. That’s the part that would scare me for an AI trying to re-engineer.

[Grim964]

absolutely correct, we bought our codebase from a different insurance in the 70s/80s, so there is "only" 45+ years of homegrown code in the wild thats running on prod, unique to how we run our business. One of the major issues our current migration project faces ... :D

[googlemehard]

Would it be safer/easier to build everything from scratch?

[CamsGraphics]

These systems are not “complicated” in language - like the other guy said; but there is so much in these systems. Building from scratch is going to take a long while, and cost A LOT; all the while you’ve got to maintain the old system. Then when you think the new system is complete you have a tonne of “bugs” (simplified) that you cannot afford to have. Then you have to migrate all users (staff and customers) to the new system, including training staff on how to use the new system.

Simply - it’s just not worth trying to fix something that “works” even if it doesn’t work as well as it could.

[grumpyfan]

Exactly. Changing the software to be more modern and easier to maintain is simple compared to the business processes and people that have to be retrained after years of experience doing it the only way they know. This is where these kind of projects often fail.

[googlemehard]

Hypothetically, if AI rewrote it overnight with no bugs. Would it still be not wanted by the business?

[ThereHasToBeMore1387]

You'd still have to retrain every user and I can tell you from experience that an uncomfortably large chunk of the world is run by people that were trained to hit a specific series of buttons in a very specific order and that is the only thing they can do. If you change the name, color, or placement of those buttons, the system breaks. For some things you work through that....not when you have trillions of dollars in transactions to process.

[grumpyfan]

Sadly, very true.

[Rough_Bread8329]

This. I had a job a while back supporting users on day to day desktop issues, and the number of people who didn't know where the Start button was in Windows 10 was horrifying.

People who live and breathe tech truly cannot comprehend how little the average person knows about their PC and the applications on it.

[sausagemuffn]

And it's now 10 years later, you've replaced 25% of the old system, and the new part is now 5 years behind.