Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Agentic interface for mainframes and COBOL

hypercubic.ai

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 60 posts

Re: Show HN: Agentic interface for mainframes and COBOL

#31

Post by dang »

beachy wrote: post #24
cube00 wrote: post #19

Earlier 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…

I was concerned when I read this, and was going to suggest that they consider changing it. But I just looked at the page and it seems clear in context. That section of the page is describing their team, and the text is talking about where they've worked previously. It's true that the logos imply some relationship, but in this case the relationship being implied is that of former employer.

Had the logos been on their frontpage with no explanation, the implication would be that these companies are customers, but there's no such implication here.

(Btw, I appreciate that you're saying this from a place of actually liking the product, or at least the idea, - I think it's often true that criticisms are coming from a place of wanting to like something, but commenters usually don't make this bit explicit and then the criticism just sounds like harshness for its own sake.)

Re: Show HN: Agentic interface for mainframes and COBOL

#32

Post by beachy »

dang wrote: post #31
beachy wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I was concerned when I read this, and was going to suggest that they consider changing it. But I just looked at the page and it seems clear in context. That section of the page is describing their team, and the text is talking about where they've worked previously. It's true that the logos imply some relationship, but in this case the relationship being implied is that of former employer. Had the logos been on their…

I went back and looked again and while I have moved a little more to your position, I still believe it is misleading. The key text to me is "Our team unites top researchers, engineers, and strategists from pioneering companies and institutions—all focused on building systems that deliver real impact." Under that are the logos. To me, that implies that engineers who are actively employed by those companies are somehow working on this, the assumption being that those employers have blessed it.

I'll admit it's not clear cut - but I feel it deliberately pushes the boundaries, as marketing often does.

But as far as the idea goes, it sounds like a fantastic direction. That should have been my primary message.

Re: Show HN: Agentic interface for mainframes and COBOL

#33

Post by sai18 »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #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 m…

> I often wonder why mainframes never had a more modern easier to maintain and manage programming language designed for them.

Although COBOL is one of the primary programming languages for the mainframe, it can also run Java and Python as the others have mentioned. COBOL itself isn't particularly difficult to grasp for modern engineers, it's readable and has an easy to understand English-like syntax.

The challenge here is learning and becoming proficient in the end to end mainframe ecosystem including the intricacies of z/OS. It's a completely closed off ecosystem and is not as accessible to play around with for the average SWE as compared to windows or linux based development.

Re: Show HN: Agentic interface for mainframes and COBOL

#36

Post by cube00 »

dang wrote: post #31
beachy wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I was concerned when I read this, and was going to suggest that they consider changing it. But I just looked at the page and it seems clear in context. That section of the page is describing their team, and the text is talking about where they've worked previously. It's true that the logos imply some relationship, but in this case the relationship being implied is that of former employer. Had the logos been on their…

> it seems clear in context

While I get marketing and faking it until you make it, I'm struggling to be comfortable with the idea that being with a company for seven/nine months and not holding something above a regular developer role (lead/senior/staff) qualifies you as being a "leading mind" or a "top engineer" from the company logos shown.

I'm not trying to be "harsh for its own sake", I've already been HN rate limited and have no desire to make that worse, so I wasn't sure if I should risk a reply, given this thread has also been manually down-weighted (I appreciate that you commented so we get more context), but I see another reply to your comment so safety in numbers.

I'm sure they're all leading minds and top engineers but I question if that applies in the context of those specific companies they're claiming.

I like the idea of the product, especially that their agents validate transformations against original system via mathematical techniques. It's my flaw that the thing that attracts me to the correctness of their agents also extends to wanting to see slightly clearer credentials of the team involved.

Re: Show HN: Agentic interface for mainframes and COBOL

#37

Post by skissane »

wmf wrote: post #30
giancarlostoro wrote: post #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 m…

Java is available on z/OS.

And Python: https://www.ibm.com/products/open-enterprise-python-zos

And node.js: https://www.ibm.com/products/sdk-nodejs-compiler-zos

And Go: https://www.ibm.com/products/open-enterprise-sdk-go-zos

IBM z/OS essentially contains three separate environments: (a) environment for running traditional mainframe applications (JCL, VSAM, ISPF, TSO/E, CICS, IMS, DB2, COBOL, PL/I, etc); (b) UNIX-based environment (supports Java, Python, node.js, Go, Kubernetes)–it officially conforms to the UNIX standard, so almost any POSIX app can be ported to it–but sometimes with some difficulty, since it is a bit of a weird UNIX implementation (e.g. by default uses EBCDIC instead of ASCII–although the filesystem has built-in support for translating between ASCII and EBCDIC and Unicode); (c) Linux container environment (zCX), which can run any Linux Docker container, provided it is compiled for the mainframe CPU architecture (z/Architecture aka s390x)

It is quite common for people to take an existing application written using (a) and add new components to it using (b) and (c). Indeed, IBM themselves tends to rely on (b) a lot in adding new OS features.

I think the biggest downside of IBM mainframes, is everything associated with them is super-expensive – the hardware, the software licensing, etc. IBM charges ISVs thousands of dollars a year just to get access to a legal development environment. (Hobbyists often use pirated versions of the software, but not a good idea if you are trying to run a business, and IBM keeps on trying to make that harder–most recently they've announced they are going to stop licensing on-premise emulated development environments and force them all to move to the cloud.)

Re: Show HN: Agentic interface for mainframes and COBOL

#38

Post by dang »

beachy wrote: post #32
dang wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was concerned when I read this, and was going to suggest that they consider changing it. But I just looked at the page and it seems clear in context. That section of the page is describing their team, and the text is talking about where they've worked previously. It's true that the logos imply some relationship, but in this case the relationship being implied is that of former employer. Had the logos been on their…

I went back and looked again and while I have moved a little more to your position, I still believe it is misleading. The key text to me is "Our team unites top researchers, engineers, and strategists from pioneering companies and institutions—all focused on building systems that deliver real impact." Under that are the logos. To me, that implies that engineers who are actively employed by those companies are somehow…

Like 90% if not 99% of HN users, I don't like marketing speak either - and am constantly advising founders to prune it from any text they post to HN. But on an "about us" company page? That's a different universe. If you hold that kind of corpspeak against a company on its own website, then your problem is with corporate marketing itself, or nearly all of it. That's also a position many of us sympathize with, but it's unfair to hold it against a specific startup.

Re: Show HN: Agentic interface for mainframes and COBOL

#39

Post by dang »

cube00 wrote: post #36
dang wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was concerned when I read this, and was going to suggest that they consider changing it. But I just looked at the page and it seems clear in context. That section of the page is describing their team, and the text is talking about where they've worked previously. It's true that the logos imply some relationship, but in this case the relationship being implied is that of former employer. Had the logos been on their…

> it seems clear in context While I get marketing and faking it until you make it, I'm struggling to be comfortable with the idea that being with a company for seven/nine months and not holding something above a regular developer role (lead/senior/staff) qualifies you as being a "leading mind" or a "top engineer" from the company logos shown. I'm not trying to be "harsh for its own sake", I've already been HN rate li…

> I've already been HN rate limited and have no desire to make that worse, so I wasn't sure if I should risk a reply

Your account isn't rate limited. Are you talking about a different account? if not, what made you think it was?

Re: Show HN: Agentic interface for mainframes and COBOL

#40

Post by cube00 »

dang wrote: post #39
cube00 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it seems clear in context While I get marketing and faking it until you make it, I'm struggling to be comfortable with the idea that being with a company for seven/nine months and not holding something above a regular developer role (lead/senior/staff) qualifies you as being a "leading mind" or a "top engineer" from the company logos shown. I'm not trying to be "harsh for its own sake", I've already been HN rate li…

> I've already been HN rate limited and have no desire to make that worse, so I wasn't sure if I should risk a reply Your account isn't rate limited. Are you talking about a different account? if not, what made you think it was?

It was this account, I only have the one. I got the "You're posting too fast. Please slow down. Thanks." error last month when I hadn't made any more then a few replies, and not in quick succession.

I got the error after writing out a detailed reply (which I lost as a result since the error is on posting not loading the form) so I couldn't have been fast enough to trigger a regular rate limit.

I thought it was unusual so I searched and found your explanation for this error message https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35157524

I assumed since I've had two warnings, a rate limit was applied.

Although given Anthropic have since removed the word "understands" from their page, I feel I was vindicated of flamebaiting. [1]

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45722979

Post reply on HN