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

Millennials and Mainframes: How to Bridge the Gap

info.model9.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 163 posts

Re: Millennials and Mainframes: How to Bridge the Gap

#61

Post by le-mark »

e5india wrote: post #25
marktangotango wrote: post #12

Mainframe skills shortage is a complete fabrication, it simply doesn’t exist. In June of this year a local company laid off 850 people, a company with a large mainframe installation (SS&C formerly DST Systems). Hundreds were mainframe programmers. This is after a decade offshoring. There are thousands of former mainframers here. And this is just in Kansas City, Mo. Anecdotal but representative I believe. Mainframes a…

Your comment made me curious and I ended up finding a great article on the story behind the layoffs at SS&C. https://www.thepitchkc.com/news/feature-story/article/210195...

Great read, long form writing we don't see enough of nowadays, and not pay walled!

Re: Millennials and Mainframes: How to Bridge the Gap

#62

Post by 52-6F-62 »

e5india wrote: post #25
marktangotango wrote: post #12

Mainframe skills shortage is a complete fabrication, it simply doesn’t exist. In June of this year a local company laid off 850 people, a company with a large mainframe installation (SS&C formerly DST Systems). Hundreds were mainframe programmers. This is after a decade offshoring. There are thousands of former mainframers here. And this is just in Kansas City, Mo. Anecdotal but representative I believe. Mainframes a…

Your comment made me curious and I ended up finding a great article on the story behind the layoffs at SS&C. https://www.thepitchkc.com/news/feature-story/article/210195...

Holy, that was a heartbreaking story of its own kind.

Re: Millennials and Mainframes: How to Bridge the Gap

#63

Post by pjc50 »

52-6F-62 wrote: post #62
e5india wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment made me curious and I ended up finding a great article on the story behind the layoffs at SS&C. https://www.thepitchkc.com/news/feature-story/article/210195...

Holy, that was a heartbreaking story of its own kind.

"Being a publicly traded company — as DST has been since 1995 — does not lend itself well to the kind of community-oriented approach DST took under McDonnell, though. When you are a public company, your duty is to your shareholders, and most of those shareholders 1.) do not live in the community in which your business is based and 2.) wish to see consistent, ever-rising profits. Handing out subsidies to the coffee shop next door, or buying up distressed assets and selling them at cost are, in the eyes of sociopathic capitalists, unnecessary acts of philanthropy. It’s the type of thing that can draw the attention of corporate raiders and activist hedge funds, entities that buy up stock in a company and then use their power to demand the short-term maximization of profits. "

Re: Millennials and Mainframes: How to Bridge the Gap

#64

Post by tetrep »

IE6 wrote: post #58
johnklos wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try this: Ok, maybe this is a silly question, but I am {...}.... Question: what is a house and why would I want one? In my mind I think of it as a big, but inelastic, tent. If that's true, why wouldn't I want to just get multiple tents instead? A mainframe is the kind of computer you can buy and set up, turn on, and run for two decades (or more, if you like) non-stop. It doesn't need reboots, it most often doesn't ev…

As a non mainframe programmer I found your anecdote about windows reliability contrary to the experience I have had over the past few decades so I am not sure how accurate the rest of your post is.

Here's my favorite: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2553549/all-the-tcp...

article about it: https://blog.ctm-it.com/it-support/blogs/matt-cannon/2013/49...

edit: If you want to be especially cynical, you can note that this wasn't discovered for a while because everyone running Windows reboots it regularly because of its notorious instability issues (the bug was found in 2013 and dates back to at least Vista, which was last updated in 2009).

Re: Millennials and Mainframes: How to Bridge the Gap

#65

Post by tomc1985 »

natvert wrote: post #28

Ok, maybe this is a silly question, but I am a millennial.... Question: what is a mainframe and why would I want one? In my mind I think of it as a big, but inelastic, compute resource. If that's true, why wouldn't I want to use something horizontally scalable instead?

Sometimes one might like to hold lots of power in reserve

Sure, my big powerful desktop PC spends 90% of its life surfing the web or doing light stuff, but for that remaining 10%... if I need the power, it rises to the challenge, every time. Plus, its paid for and I don't need to answer to anybody to make use of it.

Re: Millennials and Mainframes: How to Bridge the Gap

#66

Post by acomjean »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #52
natvert wrote: post #28

Ok, maybe this is a silly question, but I am a millennial.... Question: what is a mainframe and why would I want one? In my mind I think of it as a big, but inelastic, compute resource. If that's true, why wouldn't I want to use something horizontally scalable instead?

You want a mainframe if you want your system designed by engineers and not web developers. The IBM mainframe system is called "Z" for zero downtime. Banks and Airlines use systems that haven't needed to be rebooted in decades. (This is a little oversold, but that's the selling point.)

I think in actuality they go for what is known as "five-nines" reliability. Up 99.999% of the time. Or down about 5 minutes/year.

When I worked on "big iron" (Not sure if the old hp superdomes counts mainframes..), the solution proposed for redundancy was to have two and be able to switch from one to the other..

Our development machines had to be rebooted from time to time as we turned off interrupts for some processes (quasi-realtime) and when under development some bugs could cause the processes to fail and be uninterruptible. Things stabilized quickly though.

(edit: apparently there is 4 nines, 6 nines....) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_availability

Re: Millennials and Mainframes: How to Bridge the Gap

#67

Post by pjc50 »

IE6 wrote: post #58
johnklos wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try this: Ok, maybe this is a silly question, but I am {...}.... Question: what is a house and why would I want one? In my mind I think of it as a big, but inelastic, tent. If that's true, why wouldn't I want to just get multiple tents instead? A mainframe is the kind of computer you can buy and set up, turn on, and run for two decades (or more, if you like) non-stop. It doesn't need reboots, it most often doesn't ev…

As a non mainframe programmer I found your anecdote about windows reliability contrary to the experience I have had over the past few decades so I am not sure how accurate the rest of your post is.

https://www.cnet.com/news/windows-may-crash-after-49-7-days/

Windows has improved since then, but it's still a very brave person that would have a single business-critical Windows machine without a few scheduled maintenance and reboot periods every year.

Re: Millennials and Mainframes: How to Bridge the Gap

#68

Post by module0000 »

marktangotango wrote: post #12

Mainframe skills shortage is a complete fabrication, it simply doesn’t exist. In June of this year a local company laid off 850 people, a company with a large mainframe installation (SS&C formerly DST Systems). Hundreds were mainframe programmers. This is after a decade offshoring. There are thousands of former mainframers here. And this is just in Kansas City, Mo. Anecdotal but representative I believe. Mainframes a…

DST!? I still deal with DST(haven't heard SS&C mentioned) in the medical insurance industry every day. Nothing but bad things to say about them.

Re: Millennials and Mainframes: How to Bridge the Gap

#69

Post by WoahNow »

johnklos wrote: post #54
natvert wrote: post #28

Ok, maybe this is a silly question, but I am a millennial.... Question: what is a mainframe and why would I want one? In my mind I think of it as a big, but inelastic, compute resource. If that's true, why wouldn't I want to use something horizontally scalable instead?

Try this: Ok, maybe this is a silly question, but I am {...}.... Question: what is a house and why would I want one? In my mind I think of it as a big, but inelastic, tent. If that's true, why wouldn't I want to just get multiple tents instead? A mainframe is the kind of computer you can buy and set up, turn on, and run for two decades (or more, if you like) non-stop. It doesn't need reboots, it most often doesn't ev…

Except when they do go down it can be a catastrophic business interrupting event. Which is why the cloud model of assume everything is going to break and all your hardware is disposable works much better (IMO).

Re: Millennials and Mainframes: How to Bridge the Gap

#70

Post by module0000 »

natvert wrote: post #28

Ok, maybe this is a silly question, but I am a millennial.... Question: what is a mainframe and why would I want one? In my mind I think of it as a big, but inelastic, compute resource. If that's true, why wouldn't I want to use something horizontally scalable instead?

It's a huge, inelastic compute resource. The term "huge" can't be overstated here - however "big" you think that is, you probably aren't thinking big enough. That's the whole sell. If you ever need to scale horizontally, then your mainframe is too "small". It's not unusual to assign 2048 cores for a scheduled job on a mainframe.
Post reply on HN