Code, Noted· 1 min read
On finally reading the mainframe
AI made forty-year-old COBOL cheap to read at last. Comprehension and migration remain different problems, and the industry keeps buying one as the other.
#modernization#mainframe#ai
Tagged: modernization
7 articles
· 2 min read
The half-life of internal frameworks
Internal frameworks decay on a schedule set by staffing, not technology. On estimating the half-life before writing the framework.
#modernization#frameworks#maintenance
· 2 min read
The rewrite that worked
Everyone can name a rewrite that failed. The instructive ones are the rewrites that shipped, because they share an unglamorous shape.
#modernization#rewrites#strangler-fig
· 4 min read
Chesterton's fence has a maintenance schedule
The famous fence argues for caution before removal. It says nothing about leaving fences unexamined forever. An essay on institutionalizing the second half.
#legacy#decision-records#modernization
· 3 min read
The cost of a second datacenter
Multi-site resilience is bought in step functions, not increments. On the honest arithmetic of the second location, cloud or concrete.
#modernization#infrastructure#resilience
· 2 min read
The deprecation nobody owns
Systems accumulate deprecated things that never finish dying. On why removal is the least-funded phase of the lifecycle, and what owning it looks like.
#modernization#deprecation#maintenance
· 2 min read
Why migrations stall at eighty percent
The first eighty percent of a migration moves on rails. The last twenty is a different project with different economics, and it is rarely funded as one.
#modernization#migrations#planning