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I am wondering if my old professor answered the call. He used to work in the banking industry, is very outspoken against Capitalism and got fired for wearing je

by avgDev 7y ago

I am wondering if my old professor answered the call. He used to work in the banking industry, is very outspoken against Capitalism and got fired for wearing jeans. I have been working on a project and have some experience with DB2/AS400, it is not as old as COBOL. It is not very fun or exciting and stackoverflow lacks much information, a lot of trial and error. I can't believe how widespread these old systems are. I am surprised nobody has decided to update them, I mean when these old developers die or retire......they will have a hard time migrating to a newer systems. Bonus: I HATE IBM, .Net Core provider to access database? That is a few $$. Crappy documentation? Check. Deleted code examples I had bookmarked? Check. IBM forum questions answered in private messages, so nobody else can use the information and the question needs to be asked hundreds of times? Check. IBM is so upside down.

artificial 7y ago
I thought IBM handles this by making VMs so old things can run on the new(er) things? Isn't it turtles all the way down? I worked for a company that specialized in distribution and circulation software for all the big papers at one point in time or another and it was all COBOL with some of the code bases as old as I was (a handful of engineers remained which laid down a few of them were still on staff, pretty cool resources since they've solved pretty much everything). I bagged a bunch of AS400 operating manuals which were on their way to the trash. I've got one on my shelf I wish I could share with you. Anyway to complete the anecdote one of the younger engineers found their way to greener pastures by creating a screen scraper of sorts for the AS400 to expose it to another API. My mind was blown at the time but it makes sense since these were the webforms of their day.
- avgDev 7y ago
  In our case we have an IBM iSeries box, AS400 uses DB2 as its database. I am writing an application that communicates with DB2, and I perform a lot of queries directly on the database. We also do have a book on AS400 but most development is done by our old school dev. There is plans to migrate to a newer system but the cost is quite expensive. I mostly work in .Net MVC/Core. However, connecting to db, obtaining licenses, etc have been a real pain.
- spitfire 7y ago
  I'm not the poster you're intending but I would definitely like some AS400 manuals. I played with it a little in high school and think we're missing out on some good ideas there. I'd like to learn a little more, perhaps take some inspiration. email is in profile.
m463 7y ago
Back in the early 80s, IBM was at the top. They had solid systems and excellent documentation. They even invented the PC. But they fumbled and lost the PC and then were pretty much eclipsed by it.

by avgDev 7y ago

artificial 7y ago

I thought IBM handles this by making VMs so old things can run on the new(er) things? Isn't it turtles all the way down? I worked for a company that specialized in distribution and circulation software for all the big papers at one point in time or another and it was all COBOL with some of the code bases as old as I was (a handful of engineers remained which laid down a few of them were still on staff, pretty cool resources since they've solved pretty much everything). I bagged a bunch of AS400 operating manuals which were on their way to the trash. I've got one on my shelf I wish I could share with you. Anyway to complete the anecdote one of the younger engineers found their way to greener pastures by creating a screen scraper of sorts for the AS400 to expose it to another API. My mind was blown at the time but it makes sense since these were the webforms of their day.

avgDev 7y ago
In our case we have an IBM iSeries box, AS400 uses DB2 as its database. I am writing an application that communicates with DB2, and I perform a lot of queries directly on the database. We also do have a book on AS400 but most development is done by our old school dev. There is plans to migrate to a newer system but the cost is quite expensive. I mostly work in .Net MVC/Core. However, connecting to db, obtaining licenses, etc have been a real pain.
spitfire 7y ago
I'm not the poster you're intending but I would definitely like some AS400 manuals. I played with it a little in high school and think we're missing out on some good ideas there. I'd like to learn a little more, perhaps take some inspiration. email is in profile.

m463 7y ago

Back in the early 80s, IBM was at the top. They had solid systems and excellent documentation. They even invented the PC. But they fumbled and lost the PC and then were pretty much eclipsed by it.