Brilliant Elon Musk Does Not Understand COBOL: And Neither Do The Kids Running DOGE, They Are All Fucking Idiots

Introduction: Another Day, Another Musk Mistake

Well shit, here we go again. In what can only be described as yet another spectacular display of technical ignorance masquerading as investigative genius, Elon Musk and his team of crypto bros have managed to misinterpret basic COBOL date handling in the Social Security Administration's systems. This isn't just a small oops – it's a fundamental misunderstanding of how legacy systems work, and it's time we broke this whole mess down. Now be aware, that I (Wendy the Druid) am indeed old enough to have pushed COBOL language revisions, and have a limited understanding of how COBOL works.

The Legacy of COBOL: Why This Old Ass Language Still Runs America

Let's get one thing straight: COBOL isn't just some ancient relic we're stuck with. This language processes over $3 trillion in daily commerce, handles most of the world's ATM transactions, and runs the backbone of federal systems. According to the Federal Computing Journal's 2022 analysis, approximately 95% of ATM swipes still touch COBOL code at some point in their journey.

Why COBOL Isn't Going Anywhere

Look, we all love to shit on old technology, but COBOL has stayed around for a damn good reason. The banking sector keeps using it because it works. When's the last time you heard about a COBOL system getting hacked? Yeah, that's what I thought.

The Technical Breakdown: How COBOL Actually Handles Dates

Let's dive into some actual code, because apparently, Musk's team couldn't be bothered to do this basic research. Here's how COBOL typically handles dates:

       IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.
       PROGRAM-ID. DATE-HANDLER.
       
       ENVIRONMENT DIVISION.
       
       DATA DIVISION.
       WORKING-STORAGE SECTION.
       01 WS-BIRTH-DATE.
          05 WS-BIRTH-YEAR   PIC 9(4).
          05 WS-BIRTH-MONTH  PIC 9(2).
          05 WS-BIRTH-DAY    PIC 9(2).
       01 WS-BASE-DATE.
          05 WS-BASE-YEAR    PIC 9(4) VALUE 1875.
          05 WS-BASE-MONTH   PIC 9(2) VALUE 05.
          05 WS-BASE-DAY     PIC 9(2) VALUE 20.
       01 WS-DATE-DIFFERENCE PIC 9(7).

       PROCEDURE DIVISION.
           IF WS-BIRTH-DATE = SPACES
              MOVE WS-BASE-DATE TO WS-BIRTH-DATE
           END-IF.

When a date field is empty (which happens more often than you'd think in government systems), it defaults to the base date. This isn't a fucking bug – it's a feature designed to prevent system crashes when dealing with missing data.

Here's another example showing how date calculations actually work:

       IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.
       PROGRAM-ID. AGE-CALCULATOR.
       
       ENVIRONMENT DIVISION.
       
       DATA DIVISION.
       WORKING-STORAGE SECTION.
       01 WS-CURRENT-DATE.
          05 WS-CURR-YEAR    PIC 9(4).
          05 WS-CURR-MONTH   PIC 9(2).
          05 WS-CURR-DAY     PIC 9(2).
       01 WS-AGE             PIC 9(3).
       
       PROCEDURE DIVISION.
           ACCEPT WS-CURRENT-DATE FROM DATE
           
           IF WS-BIRTH-DATE = WS-BASE-DATE
              DISPLAY "WARNING: Using default date - "
                      "data may be incomplete"
              MOVE 0 TO WS-AGE
           ELSE
              COMPUTE WS-AGE = WS-CURR-YEAR - WS-BIRTH-YEAR
           END-IF.

The Real Problem: Technical Dunning-Kruger Effect

The issue here isn't just that Musk's team got it wrong – it's that they were so confidently incorrect that they managed to cause a public panic about Social Security integrity. This is what happens when you let crypto bros loose on mainframe systems. It's like watching a toddler try to explain quantum physics.

According to the Systems Programming Journal (2022), legacy mainframe systems have an error rate of less than 0.001% in transaction processing. You know what has a higher error rate? Fucking Tesla's self-driving software.

Why This Matters: Beyond the Technical Bullshit

The Social Security Administration's systems process over 70 million payments each month, handling trillions of dollars annually with almost perfect accuracy. The COBOL systems managing this haven't had a major failure in decades. Meanwhile, Musk's Tesla has had to recall cars because they might roll through stop signs – but sure, let's trust his team's analysis of federal computing infrastructure.

The Pattern of Misunderstanding

Remember when Musk claimed he could fix Twitter's codebase in a weekend? Yeah, that aged like milk in the Arizona sun. This COBOL situation is just the latest in a series of technical misunderstandings that demonstrate a broader pattern: billionaires thinking their success in one area makes them experts in everything.

The Expert Response

Veteran COBOL programmers have been losing their shit over this misinterpretation, and for good reason. Janet Martinez, who's been maintaining federal COBOL systems since the 1980s, actually facepalmed so hard during a recent technical conference that she left a mark. These are the people who understand these systems, not some random DOGE developers who probably think COBOL is a type of cryptocurrency.

Practical Implications

Let's break down what this means in real terms:

1. The Social Security system isn't broken

2. Those "150-year-old recipients" are just missing birth date entries

3. The system is working exactly as designed

4. Musk's team demonstrated their complete lack of understanding of legacy systems

Conclusion:

Elon Musk is a flat out dumbass. He is a generationally BASIC/VBASIC trained computer idiot. He does NOT understand C, COBOL, FORTRAN or probably any language that predates BASIC (Likely because it was not important to him). All this proves is that Musk does not know his ass from a hole in the ground, and the people running DOGE (who are probably a bunch of Java and GoLang idiots), are as equally or more equally stupid as Musk is.

Citations:

1. Federal Computing Journal (2022). "COBOL in Modern Banking Systems"

2. Systems Programming Journal (2022). "Error Rates in Legacy Systems"

3. Technical Infrastructure Quarterly (2021). "Mainframe Computing in Federal Systems"

4. Banking Technology Review (2021). "COBOL: The Backbone of Modern Finance"

5. Federal Computing Standards (2020). "Date Handling in Legacy Systems"