A 65-year-old programming language called COBOL still quietly processes over $3 trillion in banking transactions every single day — and because the original engineers are rapidly retiring, banks are scrambling to pay younger developers fortunes just to keep the ancient infrastructure from breaking (opens in new tab)

The next time you use an ATM, transfer money between accounts, or swipe a credit card at a checkout, there is a strong chance that somewhere behind the scenes — invisible, silent, and almost certainly running on a mainframe older than most of the building it sits in — a programming language called COBOL is […]