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Show HN: Agentic interface for mainframes and COBOL
21–30 of 60 posts
Re: Show HN: Agentic interface for mainframes and COBOL
#22If it ain't broke, don't fix it. So letting an LLM loose on a mainframe is like letting a fox into a henhouse. :)
The problem here is that people who understand these systems are all retiring. Majority of the devs are over 60 and there's simply not enough new talent coming in to replace them. So the real challenge companies are facing is will there be enough people to safely maintain these systems in the next decade. If they do not, it means failures in credit card systems, airline reservations, insurance claims and more.
Wouldn't the lack of supply drive up wages until more new talent is incentivized?
Re: Show HN: Agentic interface for mainframes and COBOL
#23> Mainframes still run a surprising amount of critical infrastructure: banking, payments, insurance, airlines, government programs, logistics, and core operations at large institutions. Many of these systems are decades old, but they continue to process enormous transaction volumes because they are reliable, secure, and deeply embedded into business operations.
It saddens me when companies abandon them, it takes so much effort to replicate their power. I often wonder why mainframes never had a more modern easier to maintain and manage programming language designed for them.
Re: Show HN: Agentic interface for mainframes and COBOL
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hi! I agree we should have a profile page on website. Btw, this is Aayush and I was at Apple for almost four years and Sai was there for three. And we have Kevin as our founding engineer who has almost a decade of experience and has worked at Cognition and Windsurf.
> And we have Kevin as our founding engineer who has [...] worked at Cognition and Windsurf. Kevin was at Cognition as a software engineer for 9 months and Windsurf as a design engineer for 7 months. Including company logos on the Hypercubic website because team members worked there for less then a year doesn't convey the endorsement of these companies I'd expect when I see their logo being used.
I came here to agree with this. You don't put IBM's logo on your page just because one of your team used to work there.
That gives off a bad signal to someone visiting your site.
Everyone's faking it till they make it but at the same time using a logo like that, which universally implies that you have some kind of relationship with that company or they are using your product, is not even faking it.
And that's ignoring the legal challenges you are up for if that company spots you doing it.
BTW this sounds like a genius offering
Re: Show HN: Agentic interface for mainframes and COBOL
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
> And we have Kevin as our founding engineer who has [...] worked at Cognition and Windsurf. Kevin was at Cognition as a software engineer for 9 months and Windsurf as a design engineer for 7 months. Including company logos on the Hypercubic website because team members worked there for less then a year doesn't convey the endorsement of these companies I'd expect when I see their logo being used.
I came here to agree with this. You don't put IBM's logo on your page just because one of your team used to work there. That gives off a bad signal to someone visiting your site. Everyone's faking it till they make it but at the same time using a logo like that, which universally implies that you have some kind of relationship with that company or they are using your product, is not even faking it. And that's ignorin…
Wait until Elon sees one of their products is called HyperLoop
Re: Show HN: Agentic interface for mainframes and COBOL
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem here is that people who understand these systems are all retiring. Majority of the devs are over 60 and there's simply not enough new talent coming in to replace them. So the real challenge companies are facing is will there be enough people to safely maintain these systems in the next decade. If they do not, it means failures in credit card systems, airline reservations, insurance claims and more.
Wouldn't the lack of supply drive up wages until more new talent is incentivized?
That is the current landscape today. Mainframe engineers are in high demand and good ones are paid quite well.
I've heard from a global bank, they have one mainframe developer in the team who is past 70. She manages a critical credit card service and gets paid in the upper end of 6 figures to work 20 hrs a week. She's the only one who knows that system. Lots of stories like this.
Re: Show HN: Agentic interface for mainframes and COBOL
#27If it ain't broke, don't fix it. So letting an LLM loose on a mainframe is like letting a fox into a henhouse. :)
The problem here is that people who understand these systems are all retiring. Majority of the devs are over 60 and there's simply not enough new talent coming in to replace them. So the real challenge companies are facing is will there be enough people to safely maintain these systems in the next decade. If they do not, it means failures in credit card systems, airline reservations, insurance claims and more.
> Majority of the devs are over 60 and there's simply not enough new talent coming in to replace them.
Yawn this tired old yarn, again. Mainframe development was offshored from the US decades ago. These retiring cobol programmers simply don’t exist in numbers that matter. The market could be to the companies doing the offshore work, but they’ve been throwing bodies at this problem for a long time, maybe there’s a market there maybe not.
Re: Show HN: Agentic interface for mainframes and COBOL
#28[flagged]
According to our software (which is, of course, imperfect), your account has repeatedly been posting AI-generated and/or AI-edited comments. If so, can you please not do that? It's not allowed here, and will eventually get your account banned.
See https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#generated and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47340079.
Instead, write any text that you post to HN by hand. We want to hear you in your own voice: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu....
(This is not a ding against LLMs - they're incredible tools and we use them heavily ourselves. Just not to replace human-to-human conversation.)
Re: Show HN: Agentic interface for mainframes and COBOL
#29How about mainframe systems using PL/I instead of Cobol?
Re: Show HN: Agentic interface for mainframes and COBOL
#30> Mainframes still run a surprising amount of critical infrastructure: banking, payments, insurance, airlines, government programs, logistics, and core operations at large institutions. Many of these systems are decades old, but they continue to process enormous transaction volumes because they are reliable, secure, and deeply embedded into business operations. It saddens me when companies abandon them, it takes so m…
Java is available on z/OS.