Ask HN: What is the worst codebase you have ever seen? - shubhamjain
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Someone1234
A mainframe application written in COBOL, running in some kind of Java-based
emulator, running in Tomcat, presented over the web.

When browsing to it you were literally presented with a terminal and had to
enter insanely obscure commands (all single letter or two letter if they got
fancy e.g. A L 1 (applications, list, select option #1 which you knew happen
to be stock), X (exit/terminate), J L (jobs, list), J L 1 X (jobs, list,
option #1, terminate), etc).

Oh and nobody knows how the COBOL code works because there is almost no
documentation, nobody who wrote it still works there (or is alive?), and they
cannot hire a COBOL programmer.

This is still used by a multi-national for all of their
ordering/inventory/stock/etc. Instead of updating it or replacing it, they're
just built a bunch of cruft around it which convert the outputted formats into
whatever they need (e.g. binary format into CSV, CSV to binary).

I won't name the company, but you'll find their products in the entertainment
section at all major retailers.

