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Steven Vaughan-Nichols Promoting Complex, Microsoft-Controlled, Prone-to-Breakage Rust, Then Says "the most durable tech is boring, old, and everywhere" (Contradicting Himself)
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ZDNet ☛ How AI and Rust are rewriting Linux and Windows programming
Recently, Galen Hunt, a Microsoft distinguished engineer, wrote: "My goal is to eliminate every line of C and C++ from Microsoft by 2030. Our strategy is to combine AI and algorithms to rewrite Microsoft's largest codebases" and to "evolve and augment our infrastructure to enable translating Microsoft's largest C and C++ systems to Rust."
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The Register UK ☛ The most durable tech is boring, old, and everywhere
COBOL turned 66 this year and is still in use today. Major retail and commercial banks continue to run core account processing, ATM networks, credit card clearing, and batch end-of-day settlement. On top of that, many payment networks, stock exchanges, and clearinghouses rely on COBOL for high‑volume, high‑reliability batch and online transaction processing on mainframes.
Which reminds me, mainframes are still alive and well too. Banking, insurance, governments, inventory management – all the same places you'll find COBOL, you'll find mainframes as well.
None of that is as sexy as the latest AI program or the newest cloud-native computing release, but old dogs with their old tricks still have useful work to perform.
All of which made me wonder what other technologies are likely to still be in use 50 or more years after they were first released. Here are the ones my friends and I came up with.