Social Security systems contain tens of millions of lines of code written in COBOL, an archaic programming language. Safely rewriting that code would take years—DOGE wants it done in months.

In one of those conversations, I learned about a language kerfuffle from a few years ago that took me back to the 1990s, and reminded me of how beautiful and complex nonstandard speech can be.

Two of these - Generational Shenandoah (Experimental) and Compact Object Headers (Experimental) - are new experimental features. Also, nearly half of these features are final, some of which have ...