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Ask HN: What tech stack is in demand, and why?

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Re: Ask HN: What tech stack is in demand, and why?

#31

Post by raverbashing »

shakna wrote: post #19

COBOL and Fortran. Probably with some z/OS as well. Much of the world's financial systems run on it, replacing it is infeasible, but the expert's in this area are aging out (and many have retired more than once). But the tech still needs maintaining, and is difficult to work with. Fewer and fewer grad students seem interested in learning it, and the expectation that you'll stay and work on this stack for 20+ years is…

These systems will be fixed and then tossed out

Nothing is infeasible to replace, it might be costly, but not infeasible

And of course IBM is happy to get paid millions to keep backward compatibility on the systems they sell

Nobody wants to invest their time learning a dying platform that is good for nothing but a dead end job at a bank and won't teach anything usable in any form of modern system (hope you like wearing a tie for your job as well)

(Fortran is still used, z/OS might be dying down as well but it runs some modern software)

Re: Ask HN: What tech stack is in demand, and why?

#32

Post by raverbashing »

HatchedLake721 wrote: post #18
kamac wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why nobody mentions ember? I thought it was the third most popular thing behind react and angular?

Because it’s mature and stable, hence not cool anymore

"It's not fun if the code you wrote in the morning works in the afternoon after your .js framework updates some 5 times"

Re: Ask HN: What tech stack is in demand, and why?

#34

Post by kenhwang »

kamac wrote: post #15
sp527 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Share of new projects being spun up in Angular is probably on a serious decline as well. I don’t see too much future potential there. React will probably dominate for the immediate future.

Why nobody mentions ember? I thought it was the third most popular thing behind react and angular?

I think ember will stick around. I even think it'll overtake Angular one day since it has a better dev/upgrade experience. I don't think it'll ever hit mass appeal, partially because it's quite a niche cookie cutter and the frontend world seems to value flexibility above all else.

Re: Ask HN: What tech stack is in demand, and why?

#35

Post by sclangdon »

shakna wrote: post #19

COBOL and Fortran. Probably with some z/OS as well. Much of the world's financial systems run on it, replacing it is infeasible, but the expert's in this area are aging out (and many have retired more than once). But the tech still needs maintaining, and is difficult to work with. Fewer and fewer grad students seem interested in learning it, and the expectation that you'll stay and work on this stack for 20+ years is…

https://masterthemainframe.com/ is a pretty cool website that intends to teach students how to do this kind of work by using a real IBM Z mainframe.

My first job was writing COBOL on an IBM 390. I hated it at the time, but I realise now how many important lessons I learned from it. It wasn't trendy, but it was worth doing and I'm glad I had the opportunity.

Re: Ask HN: What tech stack is in demand, and why?

#36

Post by BjoernKW »

shakna wrote: post #19

COBOL and Fortran. Probably with some z/OS as well. Much of the world's financial systems run on it, replacing it is infeasible, but the expert's in this area are aging out (and many have retired more than once). But the tech still needs maintaining, and is difficult to work with. Fewer and fewer grad students seem interested in learning it, and the expectation that you'll stay and work on this stack for 20+ years is…

There's something very true about that. COBOL knowledge is quite literally dying out.

However, for the most part those systems have been running for decades and aren't modified that much any more. While probably not completely bug-free they tend to have a low error rate, in terms of functional requirements at least. They also mostly deal with low-level mathematical and accounting functions that don't change frequently.

For better or worse a lot of COBOL code also gets replaced when new compliance measures like Basel II and III are implemented. Additionally, there are even transpiler-like tools that convert COBOL to Java code. The resulting code of course is horrible but at least it then is available in a language with a long-term maintenance outlook.

In addition to a very conservative work environment all of this contributes to COBOL not having the prospects it might seem to have at face value.

Re: Ask HN: What tech stack is in demand, and why?

#38

Post by toyg »

zaarn wrote: post #12

Looking at the local newspaper, C# Client Applications, C++/Java Business Applications and PHP+MySQL Websites with a few Node.js Jobs sprinkled in. Some lonely ads are also asking for Ruby or Python.

Do people still look up jobs in newspapers? I thought those ads were just legally-mandated foils to prove companies had looked for local people before importing cheaper foreign talent.

Re: Ask HN: What tech stack is in demand, and why?

#39

Post by imron »

raverbashing wrote: post #31
shakna wrote: post #19

COBOL and Fortran. Probably with some z/OS as well. Much of the world's financial systems run on it, replacing it is infeasible, but the expert's in this area are aging out (and many have retired more than once). But the tech still needs maintaining, and is difficult to work with. Fewer and fewer grad students seem interested in learning it, and the expectation that you'll stay and work on this stack for 20+ years is…

These systems will be fixed and then tossed out Nothing is infeasible to replace, it might be costly, but not infeasible And of course IBM is happy to get paid millions to keep backward compatibility on the systems they sell Nobody wants to invest their time learning a dying platform that is good for nothing but a dead end job at a bank and won't teach anything usable in any form of modern system (hope you like weari…

> These systems will be fixed and then tossed out

Hahaha, nope. It's easier and cheaper to train a copule of COBOL programmers than replace the systems that run COBOL.

At a previous company I worked for, it was estimated that the cost to replace just a single COBOL based system was upwards of $50 million.

Not only that, banks are notoriously risk averse, especially with their software. They are very reluctant to change things that already work.

Re: Ask HN: What tech stack is in demand, and why?

#40

Post by Juliate »

raverbashing wrote: post #31
shakna wrote: post #19

COBOL and Fortran. Probably with some z/OS as well. Much of the world's financial systems run on it, replacing it is infeasible, but the expert's in this area are aging out (and many have retired more than once). But the tech still needs maintaining, and is difficult to work with. Fewer and fewer grad students seem interested in learning it, and the expectation that you'll stay and work on this stack for 20+ years is…

These systems will be fixed and then tossed out Nothing is infeasible to replace, it might be costly, but not infeasible And of course IBM is happy to get paid millions to keep backward compatibility on the systems they sell Nobody wants to invest their time learning a dying platform that is good for nothing but a dead end job at a bank and won't teach anything usable in any form of modern system (hope you like weari…

That's exactly what we were told in 1996 (21 years ago that is) when I entered my engineering school: to disregard Cobol and Fortran, because, you know, OLD tech. Won't matter much longer.

If the cost of training peons to make it last and run is less than the cost of rebuilding it, be it from scratch or piece by piece, it will matter longer (that's the point of view of insurances, banks and big corps today, and what's still happening in the IT industry).

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