Mainframes Are Having a Moment
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Mainframes Are Having a Moment
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Re: Mainframes Are Having a Moment
#2Mainframes have been having a moment. Or, perhaps more accurately, certain enterprises are finally waking up to the fact that firing all those mainframers wasn't the best idea for the long-term. The current problem isn't the lack of interest of availability of training; both would be there if it weren't for the fact that enterprises are more interested in having their code written by consulting companies in India than by domestic employees.
Re: Mainframes Are Having a Moment
#3The surge in demand is being driven almost entirely by state unemployment systems. Most of these systems haven't seen a surge in unemployment claims since the 2009 recession and haven't had to change the underlying rules governing eligibility in even longer. Once the systems are patched and/or the surge in new claims subsides, 90% of this sudden demand for "Cobalt programmers" will evaporate. It's one thing for retired mainframe programmers to come out of retirement and work as consultants for a few months, it's quite another to start changing CS curricula nationwide along with launching mainframe bootcamps for career changers. I'd urge caution.
Re: Mainframes Are Having a Moment
#4I used to work at an environmental law firm in downtown Manhattan and accounting and other core financial systems were running on a VAX OpenVMS mainframe, and the document creation and storage was on PCs over a Token Ring, Banyan VINES network. The DOD was using VINES at the time. Memories of playing DOOM in 1994 downloaded from an FTP server somewhere while working the night shift to make backups on huge tape cartridges. The VAX system was pretty reliable and easy to deal with IIRC. A good thing from a hardware/help desk angle is that you didn't really need to troubleshoot terminals; they broke (keys or monitor) and required replacing. The mainframe was in the climate-controlled room, all in one place for any hardware servicing. I think Token Ring primarily was replaced because cheap, twisted-pair wiring made Ethernet less expensive. Token Ring had these twist-on bulky connectors. In a way we almost went there with Chromebooks basically being pared-down PCs and being served by a virtual mainframe, the cloud ("Spenser Confidential" movie "Give me the cloud scene" is hilarious).
Re: Mainframes Are Having a Moment
#5The surge in demand is being driven almost entirely by state unemployment systems. Most of these systems haven't seen a surge in unemployment claims since the 2009 recession and haven't had to change the underlying rules governing eligibility in even longer. Once the systems are patched and/or the surge in new claims subsides, 90% of this sudden demand for "Cobalt programmers" will evaporate. It's one thing for retir…
Whenever you see "urgent need" in headlines it's too late to profit from this crisis.
If anything learn COBOL in about 10 years for the next crisis.
Re: Mainframes Are Having a Moment
#6is the inertia of rewriting these systems in a modern stack so great that it's cheaper to keep finding COBOL specialists forever? why not just sit down and rewrite these systems?
Re: Mainframes Are Having a Moment
#7I used to work at an environmental law firm in downtown Manhattan and accounting and other core financial systems were running on a VAX OpenVMS mainframe, and the document creation and storage was on PCs over a Token Ring, Banyan VINES network. The DOD was using VINES at the time. Memories of playing DOOM in 1994 downloaded from an FTP server somewhere while working the night shift to make backups on huge tape cartri…
VAX's were minicomputers, not mainframes.
Re: Mainframes Are Having a Moment
#8is the inertia of rewriting these systems in a modern stack so great that it's cheaper to keep finding COBOL specialists forever? why not just sit down and rewrite these systems?
COBOL is unstructured. It doesn't even have functions. When you've got some million+ line tangled mass that has all kinds of undocumented behavior, it's really better just to add more duct tape and punt it off to the poor bastard who actually has to fix it in 20 years.
Re: Mainframes Are Having a Moment
#9is the inertia of rewriting these systems in a modern stack so great that it's cheaper to keep finding COBOL specialists forever? why not just sit down and rewrite these systems?
COBOL is unstructured. It doesn't even have functions. When you've got some million+ line tangled mass that has all kinds of undocumented behavior, it's really better just to add more duct tape and punt it off to the poor bastard who actually has to fix it in 20 years.
COBOL for IBM mainframe running z/OS does have subroutines. (I don't know if you're making a distinction between procedures and functions.)
Re: Mainframes Are Having a Moment
#10The surge in demand is being driven almost entirely by state unemployment systems. Most of these systems haven't seen a surge in unemployment claims since the 2009 recession and haven't had to change the underlying rules governing eligibility in even longer. Once the systems are patched and/or the surge in new claims subsides, 90% of this sudden demand for "Cobalt programmers" will evaporate. It's one thing for retir…
Whenever you see "urgent need" in headlines it's too late to profit from this crisis. If anything learn COBOL in about 10 years for the next crisis.
There were pre-crisis efforts to address this. NJ for example awarded a contract to Electronic Data Systems (now HP) which fell by the wayside [1]. Given the complexities of total rewrites compared to patchwork, I'd bet there will still be demand in the future.
[1] https://www.nj.com/politics/2014/11/nj_ends_118_million_cont...