Ask HN: What tech stack is in demand, and why? • Hacker News Board

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

#51

Post by jhanschoo » Mon, Nov 13, 2017, 10:37 AM UTC

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…

wrt fortran, it's not really dying, afaik. It has found its niche in very performant numerical computing.

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

#52

Post by gotofritz » Mon, Nov 13, 2017, 10:56 AM UTC

sp527 wrote: post #11

expertentipp wrote: post #9

As for the web development the situation currently stabilized as an oligopoly between Facebook (React) and Google (Angular). Some projects are trying Vue, some leftover ones with Backbone, Meteor here and there, but it's overall a minor share.

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.

Not what I see. If anything the opposite is true. Angular is very popular in "corporate" environments, basically where the decision makers have a background in Java / .NET and look down on JS. The number of job offers I am getting where angular is required is increasing.

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

#53

Post by gotofritz » Mon, Nov 13, 2017, 10:58 AM UTC

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?

A _distant_ third. Very distant. And I don't even know whether they are really third or were overtaken by Vue - Vue is part of the PHP ecosystem which alone is enough to raise its profile.

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

#54

Post by gotofritz » Mon, Nov 13, 2017, 10:59 AM UTC

kenhwang wrote: post #34

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?

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.

Not a chance.

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

#55

Post by gotofritz » Mon, Nov 13, 2017, 11:00 AM UTC

rkwasny wrote: post #42

This awesome new framework called PlainJS :) Really efficient some say :)

Absolutely not - very hard to get hired in any senior capability if that's all you know

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

#56

Post by majewsky » Mon, Nov 13, 2017, 11:19 AM UTC

hack2017 wrote: post #23

ojhughes wrote: post #16

Kubernetes, not a stack per say but increasingly important and worth understanding.

Isn't this some legacy pre-serverless platform they used to use in early/mid 201x's?

No, that's OpenStack. :)

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

#57

Post by shakna » Mon, Nov 13, 2017, 11:28 AM UTC

BjoernKW wrote: post #36

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 frequentl…

> For better or worse a lot of COBOL code also gets replaced when new compliance measures like Basel II and III are implemented.

That's really not my experience.

I was brought in to maintain, and manage a series of changes to a major bank in Australia, where I trained a full-time replacement before leaving.

We replaced COBOL code... With more COBOL.

> 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.

Not just horrible to look at. Slow. Performance that is hundreds to thousands of times slower than the pre-existing code. That's just not acceptable.

---

Now, we were writing "new" stuff in a different language - C++, because IBM has a wonderful linker framework between Fortran and C++ on their mainframes. But the COBOL is staying put, because nothing can really replace it without unacceptable downtime or performance regressions.

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

#58

Post by staticelf » Mon, Nov 13, 2017, 11:35 AM UTC

js8 wrote: post #27

staticelf wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fewer and fewer grad students seem interested in learning it Probably because it's not really fun languages to work in compared to newer things. I'd rather get paid a bit less and work with C# for example than get paid a lot more and being miserable. :) And since it is a language that will probably die off sooner or later, it is not really a good investment since it will limit your job prospects if the bank you wor…

> Probably because it's not really fun languages to work in compared to newer things. I work on z/OS utilities, mostly assembler. It can be fun, you have to be resourceful. z/OS is actually quite pleasant environment compared to many newer platforms (such as Windows), because you get a very high visibility into what's going on in the system. I guess it depends on type of person. If you love to understand things acros…

I can appreciate that, but I don't think I would enjoy developing using assembler or older languages like Fortran and Cobol.

But yeah, totally depends on the type of person and while I could potentially see myself doing these things I much rather develop in newer languages that makes my life easier. It isn't like it's bad pay for modern languages anyway.

The compensation would have to be a lot in order for me to even consider it :)

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

#59

Post by shakna » Mon, Nov 13, 2017, 11:35 AM UTC

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

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

Too costly. Which does make it infeasible.

Five minutes of downtime can result in multi-million dollar profit losses. (At least that's the quote I was given by the CTO when he was explaining the scope of my role when I was consulting at a major Australian bank).

When you have literally millions of transactions a second you need to handle, building a new system to handle the same:

* Regulations * Specifications (Some thousands of pages) * Edge cases * Load

Turns into a multi-year, multi-million dollar operation that will likely be outclassed by the old system by the time it is ready.

No manager in their right mind would approve such a project, no matter how forward-thinking it may be.

Not impossible, but entirely infeasible.

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

#60

Post by expertentipp » Mon, Nov 13, 2017, 11:43 AM UTC

gotofritz wrote: post #52

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.

Not what I see. If anything the opposite is true. Angular is very popular in "corporate" environments, basically where the decision makers have a background in Java / .NET and look down on JS. The number of job offers I am getting where angular is required is increasing.

> The number of job offers I am getting where angular is required is increasing.

Job postings on job boards, or talking with real people from real companies asking for and ready to pay for the skill? The perception of what is needed could be skewed by someone investing more in postings, recruitment spam is notorious as well.