Vintage programming Memes

When you're fresh out of bootcamp learning React and TypeScript, then someone casually mentions COBOL and you're like "what's that?" only to watch senior devs collectively lose their minds. For context: COBOL (Common Business-Oriented Language) was created in 1959 and is still running critical banking systems, insurance companies, and government infrastructure worldwide. We're talking billions of transactions daily on code older than your parents. The problem? Nobody wants to learn it, everyone who knows it is retiring, and banks are desperately clinging to these systems because rewriting them would be like performing open-heart surgery on a patient running a marathon. New programmers see it as ancient history that should be extinct. Banks see it as the immovable foundation of global finance that cannot be destroyed without triggering financial apocalypse. The cognitive dissonance is *chef's kiss*. Fun fact: There are an estimated 220 billion lines of COBOL still in production today. That's roughly 43% of all banking systems. Sleep tight! 💀

The family tree of code maintenance! Someone's friend learned COBOL (that ancient language from the 60s still powering banks and government systems) only to inherit a codebase last touched by his actual mother in the 90s. Talk about biological inheritance vs programming inheritance! While OOP enthusiasts would expect to extend a parent class with new methods, this poor soul got literal parental legacy code instead. The real inheritance tax is maintaining your mom's spaghetti code from the Reagan era. Bet those family dinners get awkward when he asks about the lack of documentation.