5 ms·

Is your dad for hire? We have this legacy toolchain in cobol and IBM assembler running on a bunch of mainframes and are just not ready to migrate to our brand n

Is your dad for hire? We have this legacy toolchain in cobol and IBM assembler running on a bunch of mainframes and are just not ready to migrate to our brand new Itanium servers we have ordered a while ago. Our engineers are busy porting all the logic but need help understanding the inner workings of the old setup. While they're at it, we have this small list of features we'd like to have added to the old version... (okok, it's Saturday so can we have this as a top level reply?)

syntaxing 8y ago
I doubt it. The post explicitly states that s/he had to put him in a nursing home which means chances are that he cannot live comfortably independently.
- gk1 8y ago
  The person you're replying to was joking.
  - syntaxing 8y ago
    hah, that went right over my head.
- smithmayowa 8y ago
  It will be very cool if he could though, as I do believe he will much rather work on something he loves doing and is good at rather than being committed to a nursing home, besides it will definitely be a sight to see, a 92 year old man hacking away on a system, debugging, writing code, and joining up in meetings, He was literally alive when computing was not a thing or worth much and he got to not just see it grow but he helped make it grow, I will definitely like to work with someone like that.
  - imesh 8y ago
    Is this a troll?
    - jshevek 8y ago
      I don't think this is a troll. A lot of young people honestly don't understand many of the realities of aging.
    - smithmayowa 8y ago
      No I'm not a troll and yeah true to the other posters words I'm 24 and apologize for my ignorance to the reality of ageing.
- dannypgh 8y ago
  Is having the ability to live independently really a prerequisite? You wouldn't know it based on the standard bigcorp benefits package.
gcb0 8y ago
if not a joke, I know a retired cobol expert (not sure about ibm asm) that would be interested. reply here with some means of contact and I will connect you.
ilaksh 8y ago
He has severe dementia unfortunately. I just thought it might be interesting to people to see what technologies were in use at those times. My dad loves to play catch with his stuffed doggie (or whatever you will throw to him) but activities more complicated than that are not feasible.
- mohsen1 8y ago
  If people didn't realize, your dad is 92! I wish my dad lives that long, I love to take care of him when he's vulnerable. Just to return the favor a little bit.
  - virgilp 8y ago
    Better take care of him now, both of you will appreciate it much better. Dementia is not fun at all, for any of the involved parties.
    - hluska 8y ago
      That's sad.
- iforgotpassword 8y ago
  > I just thought it might be interesting to people to see what technologies were in use at those times. It definitely is, not just to see what technologies were in use, but what an exemplary career in that field looked like, so thanks for sharing. It's just that the first thing that went through my head was this joke, since it's really something that isn't too far fetched situation wise (see that one longer reply). Fun story: About 6 years ago, my uncle was still working at a big car manufacturer. They have bounties for when employees come up with ideas to optimize some workflow or cut costs somewhere. He handed in a suggestion to stop computing big reports on one of their mainframes that were meant for being printed out but weren't actually for quite some time, so basically just went to /dev/null, while the generation process took quite some time. There was quite some confusion first since the IT people in charge insisted no such thing was going on, so they had him show them where this job was actually wired in and where the output went. In the end they decided to remove it and paid him some reward. How did he know? He coded that job in the 80s. I guess your dad would have quite some interesting stories too.
Shivetya 8y ago
Oh my. Where I am now we just upgraded the mainframe to a Z14, this machine and software running is not even the current OS for the platform. For my twenty plus years there have been projects afoot to replace it but nothing ever pans out. This machine works in concert with a very large iSeries that for the last ten years has been rumored to be on the table to replace. Then throw in all the AIX/Oracle machines and you get the picture. The one common reason why all replacement attempts falter if not fail. No one knows all the touch points. No one knows exactly what they really do. Oh its easy to say "that machine is the warehouse inventory and related" but on a grand scale that is a fine description. it is when you get into all the custom interfaces, all the different systems relying on it, then it becomes a whole different ball game. I full expect the z, i, and p, machines to all be there in the next ten to fifteen years for the same reason they are here now. it gets really expensive to replace something when you don't even know what you truly have. when you do find out it can be far more economical to keep what you got but be more diligent where new apps reside.
Latteland 8y ago
you must be kidding because of the itanium. uh, right?
TheCoelacanth 8y ago
That would be super impressive if he was still programming at the age of 92. The resume does say "Health: Excellent", but still.

syntaxing 8y ago

I doubt it. The post explicitly states that s/he had to put him in a nursing home which means chances are that he cannot live comfortably independently.

gk1 8y ago
The person you're replying to was joking.
- syntaxing 8y ago
  hah, that went right over my head.
smithmayowa 8y ago
It will be very cool if he could though, as I do believe he will much rather work on something he loves doing and is good at rather than being committed to a nursing home, besides it will definitely be a sight to see, a 92 year old man hacking away on a system, debugging, writing code, and joining up in meetings, He was literally alive when computing was not a thing or worth much and he got to not just see it grow but he helped make it grow, I will definitely like to work with someone like that.
- imesh 8y ago
  Is this a troll?
  - jshevek 8y ago
    I don't think this is a troll. A lot of young people honestly don't understand many of the realities of aging.
  - smithmayowa 8y ago
    No I'm not a troll and yeah true to the other posters words I'm 24 and apologize for my ignorance to the reality of ageing.
dannypgh 8y ago
Is having the ability to live independently really a prerequisite? You wouldn't know it based on the standard bigcorp benefits package.

gcb0 8y ago

if not a joke, I know a retired cobol expert (not sure about ibm asm) that would be interested. reply here with some means of contact and I will connect you.

ilaksh 8y ago

He has severe dementia unfortunately. I just thought it might be interesting to people to see what technologies were in use at those times. My dad loves to play catch with his stuffed doggie (or whatever you will throw to him) but activities more complicated than that are not feasible.

mohsen1 8y ago
If people didn't realize, your dad is 92! I wish my dad lives that long, I love to take care of him when he's vulnerable. Just to return the favor a little bit.
- virgilp 8y ago
  Better take care of him now, both of you will appreciate it much better. Dementia is not fun at all, for any of the involved parties.
  - hluska 8y ago
    That's sad.
iforgotpassword 8y ago
> I just thought it might be interesting to people to see what technologies were in use at those times. It definitely is, not just to see what technologies were in use, but what an exemplary career in that field looked like, so thanks for sharing. It's just that the first thing that went through my head was this joke, since it's really something that isn't too far fetched situation wise (see that one longer reply). Fun story: About 6 years ago, my uncle was still working at a big car manufacturer. They have bounties for when employees come up with ideas to optimize some workflow or cut costs somewhere. He handed in a suggestion to stop computing big reports on one of their mainframes that were meant for being printed out but weren't actually for quite some time, so basically just went to /dev/null, while the generation process took quite some time. There was quite some confusion first since the IT people in charge insisted no such thing was going on, so they had him show them where this job was actually wired in and where the output went. In the end they decided to remove it and paid him some reward. How did he know? He coded that job in the 80s. I guess your dad would have quite some interesting stories too.

Shivetya 8y ago

Oh my. Where I am now we just upgraded the mainframe to a Z14, this machine and software running is not even the current OS for the platform. For my twenty plus years there have been projects afoot to replace it but nothing ever pans out. This machine works in concert with a very large iSeries that for the last ten years has been rumored to be on the table to replace. Then throw in all the AIX/Oracle machines and you get the picture. The one common reason why all replacement attempts falter if not fail. No one knows all the touch points. No one knows exactly what they really do. Oh its easy to say "that machine is the warehouse inventory and related" but on a grand scale that is a fine description. it is when you get into all the custom interfaces, all the different systems relying on it, then it becomes a whole different ball game. I full expect the z, i, and p, machines to all be there in the next ten to fifteen years for the same reason they are here now. it gets really expensive to replace something when you don't even know what you truly have. when you do find out it can be far more economical to keep what you got but be more diligent where new apps reside.

Latteland 8y ago

you must be kidding because of the itanium. uh, right?

TheCoelacanth 8y ago

That would be super impressive if he was still programming at the age of 92. The resume does say "Health: Excellent", but still.