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Banks scramble to fix old systems as IT 'cowboys' ride into sunset

reuters.com

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Re: Banks scramble to fix old systems as IT 'cowboys' ride into sunset

#171

Post by u02sgb »

twic wrote: post #134
jmknoll wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a developer who recently turned thirty, I think about this a lot. I like working in startups, but its not going to fly forever. I'm already the old guy in the room. Would learning 'ancient' technology be a good career move? These systems aren't going anywhere, right? But the people who know how to maintain them are. Which means that maintaining these system, which already pays well, will pay even better in the fut…

Just hang around - the technologies you learnt when you were 20 will be ancient soon enough.

Yeah, but my impression is they're so ephemeral they might not have a big market share.

Re: Banks scramble to fix old systems as IT 'cowboys' ride into sunset

#172

Post by devwastaken »

kpil wrote: post #99
jerguismi wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about not doing a rewrite? What about instead refactoring, documenting etc the old system.

Because COBOL is the PHP of the 60s, and mainframes are slow and expensive. Also, too many of the talents are stuck in a blocked I/O mindset somehow. Some are wizards though, writing assembly and making raspberry pi sized systems blazingly fast. OK a couple of raspberry pi:s

There was never an excuse to not document PHP functionality. Infact, its quite easy to document now, just the same as any other language. Devs simply argue that the 'system is still changing', and so nothing is documented.

Re: Banks scramble to fix old systems as IT 'cowboys' ride into sunset

#173

Post by cafard »

jfoutz wrote: post #69
nsxwolf wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You got that right. I had to deal with an interesting banking file format and I asked a question on Stack Overflow and got this gem of an answer. I politely accepted it as the right answer but boy oh boy does it feel like it's from an alien civilization. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/28640159/what-is-the-diff...

Unix has a few tricks up its sleeve from when it wasn't the top dog. I hesitate to ever recommend perl, but pack [1] and unpack are pretty sweet for this kind of stuff. I only learned about them when a state sent me files in EBCDIC [2]. As with all things perl, you can convert from that to ASCII as a one liner. Or, rather, i helped someone much smarter than me do that, 20 years ago. [1] http://perldoc.perl.org/functi…

No kidding. Over 20 years ago, I used unpack to read minicomputer log files. It was vastly faster to FTP them over to a Sun Sparcstation and process them with Perl than to use the native log reader. It was also far more flexible.

Re: Banks scramble to fix old systems as IT 'cowboys' ride into sunset

#174

Post by tajen »

user5994461 wrote: post #167
tajen wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

French banks are actually doing that! SG/Société Générale, a brick and mortar bank that costs a hundred dollars a year, built Boursorama, an e-bank that's free and that gives you $200 if you subscribe. Advantage: SG has too many manned agencies and can't justify preemptively mass-firing them yet – they first need the customer base to dwindle. Better IT, usage of Internet techniques at the core, and drastically simpli…

Boursorama is not a bank. It's a website to allow people to play on the financial markets ("bourse" = exchange). I think Americans would call that a sort of dealing account. Obviously, a dealing account has to hold funds and handle transfers. That's not any close to a consumer bank though.

Boursorama Banque is a bank, as in, a normal cheque account, IBAN, VISA card, loans, term deposits and no trading account. Real normal bank. The main Boursorama website is another department, it's not really clear on their website.

Re: Banks scramble to fix old systems as IT 'cowboys' ride into sunset

#175

Post by forgottenpass »

DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #159
Shivetya wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have most platforms from IBM, z (Mainframe), iSeries (AS/400), p (AIX), plus about everything windows. Moving off core systems (z/i/p) isn't simple mostly because of the amount of data combined with all the custom applications. every attempt to move the apps off the z don't come to fruition because of scope and the fact it just works. the i is increasing its load to pick up from the z and getting a good dose of we…

> Moving off core systems (z/i/p) isn't simple mostly because of the amount of data combined with all the custom applications. I wonder if someone could get away with selling a z/i/p emulator, akin to Wine. (Or perhaps more appropos, Mame, since the machine architecture would differ as well.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hercules_(emulator)

The problem isn't the availability of an emulator, it's licensing the OS you want to use on the emulator.

Re: Banks scramble to fix old systems as IT 'cowboys' ride into sunset

#176

Post by daemin »

nickbauman wrote: post #61
parthdesai wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotal, but my friend knew VP of Information Technology at one of the big 4 banks in Canada really well. The VP told my friend to learn COBOL and if he passed the interview, they give you a blank paper where you write down your salary.

What this VP should have been doing was figuring out how to get out of that scenario entirely.

Well the VP probably knew that 1) The company (couldn't afford | didn't want to spend) to build a new replacement system. 2) New people would be needed to maintain the existing system 3) Students don't know how much their services would be worth - so the amount might not be big enough as a regular engineer might charge.

Re: Banks scramble to fix old systems as IT 'cowboys' ride into sunset

#177

Post by nickpsecurity »

CyberDildonics wrote: post #168
viraptor wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Migration target like visual cobol (not a joke). Just look at those smiling hipsters writing cobol.net on their laptop. https://www.microfocus.com/products/visual-cobol/visual-cobo...

I can't wait until I can compile Cobol for webasm

Nah, go with terminal apps in Visual COBOL distributed as Electron apps.

Re: Banks scramble to fix old systems as IT 'cowboys' ride into sunset

#178

Post by pdimitar »

bad_login wrote: post #166
UweSchmidt wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Best story I've heard is one of the old programmers commenting his COBOL code in latin . It was a different time...

It's common practice in Vatican Bank.

How do you know? Have you seen one?

Re: Banks scramble to fix old systems as IT 'cowboys' ride into sunset

#179

Post by nickpsecurity »

DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #159
Shivetya wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have most platforms from IBM, z (Mainframe), iSeries (AS/400), p (AIX), plus about everything windows. Moving off core systems (z/i/p) isn't simple mostly because of the amount of data combined with all the custom applications. every attempt to move the apps off the z don't come to fruition because of scope and the fact it just works. the i is increasing its load to pick up from the z and getting a good dose of we…

> Moving off core systems (z/i/p) isn't simple mostly because of the amount of data combined with all the custom applications. I wonder if someone could get away with selling a z/i/p emulator, akin to Wine. (Or perhaps more appropos, Mame, since the machine architecture would differ as well.)

IBM legally destroyed a business for trying to do that on top of Hercules emulator. You can use the emulator, though, with a licensed copy of their mainframe OS. Common case is you already have license for an actual mainframe then use Hercules for development/debugging/whatever.

Re: Banks scramble to fix old systems as IT 'cowboys' ride into sunset

#180

Post by bpicolo »

kpil wrote: post #99
jerguismi wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about not doing a rewrite? What about instead refactoring, documenting etc the old system.

Because COBOL is the PHP of the 60s, and mainframes are slow and expensive. Also, too many of the talents are stuck in a blocked I/O mindset somehow. Some are wizards though, writing assembly and making raspberry pi sized systems blazingly fast. OK a couple of raspberry pi:s

Non-Blocking i/o isn't really some miracle new-age programming drug. Doesn't change the equation much.
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