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A comment on Child's Play: Tech's new generation and the end of thinking. Parent comment

Re:Child's Play: Tech's new generation and the end of thinking by Buttons840 on Friday February 20, 2026 @04:07PM (#47093984)
An example of this I've personally seen is a friend who works on COBOL mainframes at a bank.

He writes COBOL and maintains a banking system that keeps the world running. Literally like a billion people die if the system he maintains fails. I maintain a VC funded webpage that only works half the time. I make more than him, a lot more.

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Re:Child's Play: Tech's new generation and the end of thinking by dyauspitr on Friday February 20, 2026 @04:13PM (#47094049)
> Literally like a billion people die if the system he maintains fails.

This has to be an exaggeration.

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Re:Child's Play: Tech's new generation and the end of thinking by altmanaltman on Friday February 20, 2026 @04:34PM (#47094295)
I can personally attest that I'll die if my bank's COBOL mainframe fails. Really got a lot riding on this.
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Re:Child's Play: Tech's new generation and the end of thinking by Buttons840 on Friday February 20, 2026 @05:08PM (#47094713)
If the banking system failed? Would be pretty bad...
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Re:Child's Play: Tech's new generation and the end of thinking by itronitron on Friday February 20, 2026 @04:28PM (#47094230)
You should ask your friend what they do with all of the half cents that are floating around in the banking system.
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Re:Child's Play: Tech's new generation and the end of thinking by bitwize on Friday February 20, 2026 @05:55PM (#47095184)
"It's not a virus, it's a worm!"

https://youtube.com/watch?v=bcAACOrgVKE

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