Kill It with Fire

Another useful exercise to run when dealing with technical debt is to compare the technology available when the system was originally built to the technology we would use for those same requirements today. I employ this technique a lot when dealing with systems written in COBOL. For all that people talk about COBOL dying off, it is good at certain tasks. The problem with most old COBOL systems is that they were designed at a time when COBOL was the only option. If the goal is to get rid of COBOL, I start by sorting which parts of the system are in COBOL because COBOL is good at performing that task, and which parts are in COBOL because there were no other tools available. Once we have that mapping, we start by pulling the latter off into separate services that are written and designed using the technology we would choose for that task today.