Part of the confusion comes from Social Security’s software system based on the COBOL programming language, which doesn’t use a specific format for dates.

On Friday, Wired reported that DOGE is forming a team to migrate the Social Security Administration’s computer systems off the archaic COBOL programming language in a matter of months.

A mainframe hosts those systems, which were built in part with the COBOL programming language, according to Jimmy Cox, Florida PALM project director. The stakes are pretty high.

The ‘no-code’ revolution was supposed to democratise software development, putting programming power into the hands of ...

Part of the confusion comes from Social Security’s software system based on the COBOL programming language, which doesn’t use a specific format for dates.