Ask HN: Anyone have punch card reports still running?
The IL DuPage County Tax office still does. There is a General Ledger report that was ported from punch cards from the 40's/50's to a mainframe in the late 70's. This was ported to PC and kept the same flat file format at the main frame with a VB3 front end in ~96. Then the back end was switched to Access and VB3 to VB6 in ~2002. Then the front to VB.Net and back to SQL Server in 2010. It was set to be replaced with an ERP system in 2014, but the ERP report was not good enough(or something). So to this day the numbers are hand typed back to the old system so the report can be generated, in the exact same format and switches used in the punch card system from the ~50s. There was a punch card for each line(8 fields) of the report. And there were separate cards with formatting for every 10 lines. Ones and zeros in each byte would dictate if the data would be printed or not. To print the report it would be “zippered?” from the two card decks. To this day formatting this report involves editing those bytes(VB.Net WinForm) and the report runs the same way. It was a "sacred cow" that “just worked” and could not be "fixed". Here are the reports: https://www.dupagecounty.gov/government/departments/finance/financial_reports/audited_financial_reports.php
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