DoomIT

Two years ago, while reading HBR, an article about Air France flight caught my attention. It got me wondering about the various automation drives like AI, RPA, Machine Learning and others that we are currently implementing. What if the same were to happen to enterprise application portfolio. A decade ago, at the time of 50 years of COBOL, ComputerWorld has written a series of articles on the ubiquitous presence of COBOL, and the aging COBOL programmer compared to other languages. Imagine the mix, where the COBOL programmers are retiring after a decade, and various automation tools have been implemented. Tragically, any such large-scale discussion leads to Year 2000, and the perceptions created during and after the project. But we are at unique cross-roads, as legacy application programmers are retiring or near retirement age, and the current set of programmers are reluctant to learn the legacy applications. Though there is no firm deadline that is common across the Industry, each company needs to review and draw its own timeframe based on the last of legacy application programmer walking out of the door. When we refer to a programmer, I am not referring to programmers who can only do bug fixing etc., but who have a broad application knowledge and in-depth knowledge of the functionality and architecture of the application. The path we need to take is staring at us, and now is the time for us to act!Throughout the course of this book I will be referring to my experiences and Year 2000 to draw parallels with the current scenario. Due to several reasons, I am camouflaging the scenarios without letting the core issue be impacted.