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In the old days 100% of computers were doing civilization critical work, Air traffic control, Social Security checks, nuclear reactor monitoring. Computers are
by VLM 10y ago
In the old days 100% of computers were doing civilization critical work, Air traffic control, Social Security checks, nuclear reactor monitoring. Computers are expensive and automation provides the most gain in those applications. There just aren't that many civilization critical systems.
In the modern era we continue to have the same small number of civilization critical systems, we still have exactly one air traffic control system. However we have billions of, well, filler. Ringtones and social media and spam. Therefore rounded down 0% of modern computers are doing civilization critical work and safe secure systems superficially appear to be a thing of the past even if the number of systems and employees remain constant.
In 1960 the average ALU was calculating your paycheck and it was rather important to get that done on time and correctly. In 2010 the average ALU is a countdown timer in your microwave oven, its your digital thermostat, its my cars transmission processor, maybe its video game system or other human interface device (desktop, laptop, phone) but probably numerically unlikely. Things are sloppier now because they're sloppy-tolerant applications.
- matt_wulfeck 10y agoGreat explanation. In other words the median number of computers performing some kind of critical task has probably gone from 90% somewhere closer to 0.
- zhte415 10y agoIn absolute numbers they're still there. Air traffic control and baggage sorting applications still run APL, and your bank still runs COBOL. It has not gone away.
- koja86 10y agoWhile hearing about COBOL in banks quite often all my friends actually working there say Java and Oracle and all related job adverts I have seen so far were Java or C++. Could someone please provide some relevant facts?
- innocenat 10y agoThe Core banking system (the one that is actually processing transactions) may still be in COBOL. The other add-on services are probably in other languages. I know a few banks here (Thailand) that has successfully transition its core banking to Java, so I would guess many large banks have done the transition too. However, I doubt smaller banks would have done the transition.
- breakingcups 10y agoIntuitively I'd feel like the larger the bank, the more work such a transition would be and thus the smaller the likelihood of it having happened.
- VLM 10y agoThe larger the bank (or any company, really) the more labor they've been devoting to merger cleanup.
- zhte415 10y agoYou're correct. It is a massive transition, middle-layer upon middle layer. Oracle market a completely different code-base (which is fully Java), even single-currency code-bases, from those for larger banks, small third parties 'partners' providing implementation.
- zhte415 10y agoOK, so I'm probably revealing something about myself... appreciate HN's value for what you say rather than who you are. But as you asked... Flexcube now owned by Oracle (core banking, basically a general ledger if used to that extent) and VisionPlus (credit cards) are done in multiple languages, but the core is COBOL. If you're in banking you probably have a guess who I worked for. These systems go deep into an organisation's nervous system, and in the case of Flexcube, for example, come from a prominent bank's nervous system. Most in-hourse mainframe programming today however is on the middle layer providing APIs with JSON feeds, heavy lifting left to 3rd parties largely with workforces in India and sometimes China. This is a world away from trading or investment management. While for a layman 'finance' is often a catch-all, banking IT and trading IT are different worlds. Java dominates investment/trading, with C# doing a bit but not much. C++ is mainly plugins for traders written for something not self-taught VBA that need to do things fast, but Java has largely filled that void supplemented by C#. Edit: Around 5-10 years ago, a lot of IT work in banking was about unifying each country's code-base around a common core, the larger the bank the more tedious the task. Now it is all about AML and KYC, if you're interested in banking non front-office space. ML is a joke, quants do what quants do and win 50% of the time.
- StreamBright 10y agoAnd nuclear power plants still managed by systems from the 70s-80s, simply because they still operate and still do what they have to.
- PeCaN 10y agoNobody wants to be that guy who has to rewrite the nuclear power plant software. I do wonder what they use. I assume off-site computers aren't really an option for networking reasons, so Stratus, NonStop, z mainframes, etc probably. I wonder if they have a backup mainframe, or if the redundancy in one of those things is enough.
- intrasight 10y ago>Nobody wants to be that guy who has to rewrite the nuclear power plant software. Nobody is allowed to rewrite the nuclear power plan software. My first job was at Westinghouse Nuclear Division. Those Fortran libraries were off-limits in terms of changes.
- erelde 10y agoIs there a good move here? Update or not?
- StreamBright 10y agoNo surprise, same story in energy balance circle management to calculate the optimal schedule.
- dfc 10y ago> energy balance circle management WTF? What is energy balance circle management?
- StreamBright 10y agoWhen you are creating a schedule for all the power plants taking into consideration predictions for home and industrial users and trading as well. There can be domestic and foreign trading involved as well. Not sure how it is called in English.
- edblarney 10y agoAgreed - but also consider 'multiple points of redundancy'. If you have your service spread across 10K servers, well, it doesn't matter if some go down. Instead of making them all 100% super fault-tolerant for a crazy expensive unit price, you can make them relatively cheap and replace them when they fail.