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Show HN: Agentic interface for mainframes and COBOL

hypercubic.ai

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Re: Show HN: Agentic interface for mainframes and COBOL

#51

Post by drob518 »

sai18 wrote: post #13
sixtyj wrote: post #6

If 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.

True story. I used to work for a company that developed both mainframe software as well as “enterprise” software (based on Unix systems). The two sides of the house were pretty separate. While I was on the enterprise side, through a fluke of geography, I worked in the building with many of the mainframe folks. In a normal office, you might have emails go out about events like employee birthdays, marriages, and kids being born. In the mainframe office there were emails that went out about employee deaths. Several of the employees had walkers.

The age of mainframe folks is highly bi-modal. The original folks are dying of old age. There is a new crop of 35-and-under folks that have sprung up as they noticed that the work is very steady and the pay is good. Between ages 35 and 65, there aren’t many mainframe people.

Re: Show HN: Agentic interface for mainframes and COBOL

#53

Post by sai18 »

le-mark wrote: post #50
sai18 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Throwing bodies has been the primary way to approach mainframe modernization and a majority of them do end up failing ( https://softwaremodernizationservices.com/insights/mainframe... ). Now bringing in AI agents that are incredibly good at software engineering into the modernization lifecycle can completely change the landscape. That's the vision we're building towards at Hypercubic. Previously you might need 50 eng…

Failure at 1/5 the price is still failure.

With agentic systems that are extremely proficient in the mainframe ecosystem, the failure rates for modernization should dramatically go down.

What we're attempting was not possible two years or even a year ago.

Re: Show HN: Agentic interface for mainframes and COBOL

#58

Post by schlauerfox »

aayn wrote: post #3
schlauerfox wrote: post #2

Is this available to install on Hercules emulator for hobbyists? For people unfamiliar with Mainframes, check out the moshix youtube channel.

We don't currently support Hercules, but we are providing free access to a mainframe for people to try out.

That's great! Thank you

Re: Show HN: Agentic interface for mainframes and COBOL

#60

Post by sharts »

ofrzeta wrote: post #45
sharts wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can run kubernetes on mainframes. They’re not as old/out of touch that most people think

Can you provide more info / examples on that?

Think of them as say, your AWS. Except that you can just start randomly replacing hardware without the software skipping a beat. That’s the level of redundancy and stability these things offer.

I didn’t know this either until I started just researching a while back. It’s amazing. They get a bad rep, but they are very very awesome and modern.

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