RetireJapan

Finally got my iDeCo account credentials and checked out the iDeCo website.

Wow! Who are these Japan Investor Solutions & Technologies people and how come noone could feel responsible enough to stop this website from being built with cutting edge Windows 95 era technology complete with retro clipart, gif graphic buttons and tabs, and frames? I'm amazed they didn't use blinking banners and warn users that the site was optimized for Internet Explorer...

This has really made me think twice about adding a Japan tilt to my portfolio.

Looks like the site was actually built with Windows 3.1 era encoding...

I hear that COBOL is still in use with many American systems, and there is some good money to be made by consultants who come out of retirement to bandage up a system.

With iDeco they expect the broker to take care of the front-end, ala Rakuten, SBI. Few people are using the JST site. I only needed my info to connect my iDeco to Moneyforward.

Tsumitate Wrestler wrote: ↑Thu Jul 18, 2024 1:52 am I hear that COBOL is still in use with many American systems, and there is some good money to be made by consultants who come out of retirement to bandage up a system.

With iDeco they expect the broker to take care of the front-end, ala Rakuten, SBI. Few people are using the JST site. I only needed my info to connect my iDeco to Moneyforward.

Good point. It seems that the site was launched back in 2001 and was probably state of the art web design at the time.

There’s all this stuff about how to access forms and things by fax so it’s quite a blast from the past!

Tsumitate Wrestler wrote: ↑Thu Jul 18, 2024 1:52 am I hear that COBOL is still in use with many American systems, and there is some good money to be made by consultants who come out of retirement to bandage up a system.

With iDeco they expect the broker to take care of the front-end, ala Rakuten, SBI. Few people are using the JST site. I only needed my info to connect my iDeco to Moneyforward.

I had thought that that the IRS was the major institution still using COBOL:
https://www.gao.gov/blog/outdated-and-o ... ayers-risk

but it turns out it is still widely at the heart of financial software in large institutions, at least according to companies that service it:
https://www.qs2point.com/post/renaissan ... on%20daily.

I guess one of the reasons the Mizuho Bank system keeps going on the blink might be because the younger systems guys are not as skilled in COBOL as their sempai's. Sort of reminded me of the movie Space Cowboys in which Clint Eastwood and his team of retired space engineers have to go fix a failing satellite up in orbit.

Just my humble opinion, but when my SBI site, on the front page, tells me how much I’ve paid, how much my investments are now worth, the gain, what my allocation is set to and where my current allocation is at now, I’m not sure what else it could tell me that I need to know. How much it complies with current design standards is not important to me.