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> As a developer, why would you want to waste your time learning about this sort of tech (I can't think of a more risky ecosystem to invest your time into learn

> As a developer, why would you want to waste your time learning about this sort of tech (I can't think of a more risky ecosystem to invest your time into learning in terms of chance of the skillset becoming obsolete)? You realize that mainframes aren't just for running 40-year-old COBOL applications, right? Pretty much any code you might write, including that written in the hippest, trendiest, fad-of-the-week language, will run on top of this "risky ecosystem".

bewo001 6y ago
True for any computer, so not a good argument. I interned in the early 90's at a mainframe shop, and everything felt archaic even back then. Creating a file (sry 'dataset') is as complex as partioning a disk on other systems. The punch card still lurked under a lot of parts of the system 'Of course JCL does not have loop constructs, how would this ever work with a stack of cards?'. I stayed away from mainframes ever since. Sure, you can run lots of Linux VMs on a mainframe. But now you need the skills for both --very different-- systems. Some time ago, I was involved in a project to replace a mainframe and one important reason for it was that they could not find anyone willing to replace the retiring mainframe operators. Learn about Linux and you can work in fields ranging from tiny embedded devices to high performance computing. Learn about MVS and you are stuck in a shrinking niche.
lol768 6y ago
> You realize that mainframes aren't just for running 40-year-old COBOL applications, right? > Pretty much any code you might write, including that written in the hippest, trendiest, fad-of-the-week language, will run on top of this "risky ecosystem". Nobody has presented any compelling arguments as to why a business would want to do this. Why would I ever want to learn about z/OS as a developer? And if we're not using z/OS, and we're using Linux on IBM Z instead (which doesn't work without virtualization), why would I not just deploy to VMs/Kubernetes/other x86-64 or ARM based machines? It'd certainly save on the licensing costs!
- js8 6y ago
  IMHO Linux on IBM Z cannot exploit its hardware capabilities as well as z/OS can. I think that's pretty much the reason to go with z/OS (aside from the existence of legacy applications).
znpy 6y ago
Yup. S390 (IBM mainframe arch) is first-class citizen for RHEL, Ubuntu as well as languages like Java and golang.

bewo001 6y ago

True for any computer, so not a good argument. I interned in the early 90's at a mainframe shop, and everything felt archaic even back then. Creating a file (sry 'dataset') is as complex as partioning a disk on other systems. The punch card still lurked under a lot of parts of the system 'Of course JCL does not have loop constructs, how would this ever work with a stack of cards?'. I stayed away from mainframes ever since. Sure, you can run lots of Linux VMs on a mainframe. But now you need the skills for both --very different-- systems. Some time ago, I was involved in a project to replace a mainframe and one important reason for it was that they could not find anyone willing to replace the retiring mainframe operators. Learn about Linux and you can work in fields ranging from tiny embedded devices to high performance computing. Learn about MVS and you are stuck in a shrinking niche.

lol768 6y ago

> You realize that mainframes aren't just for running 40-year-old COBOL applications, right? > Pretty much any code you might write, including that written in the hippest, trendiest, fad-of-the-week language, will run on top of this "risky ecosystem". Nobody has presented any compelling arguments as to why a business would want to do this. Why would I ever want to learn about z/OS as a developer? And if we're not using z/OS, and we're using Linux on IBM Z instead (which doesn't work without virtualization), why would I not just deploy to VMs/Kubernetes/other x86-64 or ARM based machines? It'd certainly save on the licensing costs!

js8 6y ago
IMHO Linux on IBM Z cannot exploit its hardware capabilities as well as z/OS can. I think that's pretty much the reason to go with z/OS (aside from the existence of legacy applications).

znpy 6y ago

Yup. S390 (IBM mainframe arch) is first-class citizen for RHEL, Ubuntu as well as languages like Java and golang.