5 ms·

Anecdata. I work for a top 10 bank. The mainframe isn't going away here. We're investing in new development, new tools, and just (last 2 years or so) had a h

by kjs3 6y ago

Anecdata. I work for a top 10 bank. The mainframe isn't going away here. We're investing in new development, new tools, and just (last 2 years or so) had a hiring spree to support those efforts. I am also very familiar with strategy at several other peer banks (they're doing the same thing), a number of the telcos (same) and 2 of the major airlines (who will look at you like you're insane if you suggest they get rid of their mainframe). I've been hearing "mainframes are dead" since the 1980s. The market for them has dramatically changed, but by the same token there's just more people in IT who have no clue what the mainframes do from a business perspective, so "obviously" it's a dead end.

paol 6y ago
That doesn't make it thriving though. It's a niche that continues to get smaller, albeit at a very slow rate.
- meepmorp 6y ago
  Their anecdata beats your unsourced generalization.
  - kjs3 6y ago
    No, mine is anecdata too, just more of it. And neither wins because there's actual data out there about the size and velocity of the mainframe market. I just don't much care to look it up every time someone makes an unfounded declaration that mainframes are dead. And, since we're keeping score, zero content snark is bottom of the heap.
    - meepmorp 6y ago
      I was saying your anecdata beats the other guy. I definitely agree the mainframe ain't dead. > And, since we're keeping score, zero content snark is bottom of the heap. That's just hurtful, man.
- Guest42 6y ago
  I think the difference is that the mainframe isn’t going anywhere and the large companies themselves have been thriving and will likely continue to do so. My employer has a number of them and they work great although it’s challenging to find the developers. If it was my decision to migrate I’d be hesitant because it seems as though infrastructure is priced low enough to convince people to switch but then will likely creep up over time in either prices or lock-in.
- kjs3 6y ago
  I don't dispute that; every niche has a growth phase and a decline phase. See: Minicomputers or RISC workstations. However, given a nearly 60 year run so far, and an expectation that there's a couple more decades of life it it, we should be so lucky if whatever niche we work in 'fails to thrive' like that.
  - wbl 6y ago
    The replacement for a RISC workstation was an Intel one serving the same role for the same kind of customer. The mainframe doesn't have that sort of path.
    - zozbot234 6y ago
      > The mainframe doesn't have that sort of path. Datacenter-scale compute on non-proprietary platforms (e.g. leveraging OCP standards and best practices, which have been developed w/ significant input from FAANG and 'cloud' vendors) can easily tackle any mainframe workload. The implied path is obvious.
      - monocasa 6y ago
        Yes, and you can see the mainframe origins in the modern cloud. It was funny to see the predecessor to Kubernetes (Borg) had a language that was even a wink and a nod to JCL called BCL that then evolved into Kubernetes's resource config files. That being said, it takes a massive commitment and pretty much a rewrite from scratch to achieve a jump from mainframe to modern DC. You need to embrace individual node failure and that's not something you can just hack in.
      - shrubble 6y ago
        Can you provide an example of a company that migrated their mainframe based highly-available transactions oriented workload, to what you mention?
      - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
        This is actually a good comment - look at a datacenter and squint, and tell me - is it not justa a new mainframe? AWS, Azure and GCP are all proprietary, and all are producing larger and larger servers and VMs. They are basically rentable, virtualised mainframes at this point
ralphc 6y ago
To someone going into IT or programming at a young age (so, not me), would you recommend them to get into COBOL and mainframes? Will it be a career option for 10+ years?
- konjin 6y ago
  Cobol is alive the same way Latin is. Unless you're sure you can get a job in the Vatican you're screwed if you learn it.
  - gumby 6y ago
    I understand and agree with your point but hey, I got a lot of benefit from learning Latin, arguably more than I got for learning Lisp (which was is what I used for the first 10 years of my career. It was a fun and quite lucrative period). For graduates of my (very small) high school, Classics was the number one choice of college major and though I'm not in close touch with all of them I never heard any of them claim that they had made a mistake. Cobol is sort of like Lisp* in that regard: the options are quite limited, but as the supply is too you'll probably do better than fine financially. * wow is it painful to write that.
    - konjin 6y ago
      Lisp is interesting because it always has a first mover advantage in any field, i.e. I can code up something that does 80% of what I want in 10% of the time of any other language. Cobol's only use is that it's entrenched. Which is why I used the vatican comparison.
      - kazinator 6y ago
        In a nutshell, Cobol fails to inspire throngs of youngsters to write "toy Cobol" implementations. It is also relatively rare for new languages cite Cobol as an inspiration for any of their features. Cobol has a feature whereby dissimilar structures can be assigned. The structure members which have the same names are identified between the structures and the data is moved accordingly. Or something like that. A programming language which has such a thing could claim to have had that inspired by Cobol. If I ever add that to TXR Lisp, I will be sure to drop a Cobol reference into the documentation. I might have learned about this via Knuth; I think there is a mention of it in some passage in TAOCP.
leokennis 6y ago
Anecdote too. I work for a large bank too, and >95% of our business has now moved off the mainframe. Took about 8 years to migrate. I’m not savvy on the costs, but I think the main benefit of ditching the mainframe is you can start using the IT tools, expertise, workflows, languages, frameworks, best practices etc. that 99% of the world is using. With the mainframe, you’re in sort of a shielded of nook of the software world, where everything is fast and stable but also juuust a little different.
freetanga 6y ago
same role, across European banking sector. Key theme is slimming down the mainframe to bare basics, then take out either batch, or DB2, and then see to pull the trigger on the rest, 6y horizon...

by kjs3 6y ago

paol 6y ago

That doesn't make it thriving though. It's a niche that continues to get smaller, albeit at a very slow rate.

meepmorp 6y ago
Their anecdata beats your unsourced generalization.
- kjs3 6y ago
  No, mine is anecdata too, just more of it. And neither wins because there's actual data out there about the size and velocity of the mainframe market. I just don't much care to look it up every time someone makes an unfounded declaration that mainframes are dead. And, since we're keeping score, zero content snark is bottom of the heap.
  - meepmorp 6y ago
    I was saying your anecdata beats the other guy. I definitely agree the mainframe ain't dead. > And, since we're keeping score, zero content snark is bottom of the heap. That's just hurtful, man.
Guest42 6y ago
I think the difference is that the mainframe isn’t going anywhere and the large companies themselves have been thriving and will likely continue to do so. My employer has a number of them and they work great although it’s challenging to find the developers. If it was my decision to migrate I’d be hesitant because it seems as though infrastructure is priced low enough to convince people to switch but then will likely creep up over time in either prices or lock-in.
kjs3 6y ago
I don't dispute that; every niche has a growth phase and a decline phase. See: Minicomputers or RISC workstations. However, given a nearly 60 year run so far, and an expectation that there's a couple more decades of life it it, we should be so lucky if whatever niche we work in 'fails to thrive' like that.
- wbl 6y ago
  The replacement for a RISC workstation was an Intel one serving the same role for the same kind of customer. The mainframe doesn't have that sort of path.
  - zozbot234 6y ago
    > The mainframe doesn't have that sort of path. Datacenter-scale compute on non-proprietary platforms (e.g. leveraging OCP standards and best practices, which have been developed w/ significant input from FAANG and 'cloud' vendors) can easily tackle any mainframe workload. The implied path is obvious.
    - monocasa 6y ago
      Yes, and you can see the mainframe origins in the modern cloud. It was funny to see the predecessor to Kubernetes (Borg) had a language that was even a wink and a nod to JCL called BCL that then evolved into Kubernetes's resource config files. That being said, it takes a massive commitment and pretty much a rewrite from scratch to achieve a jump from mainframe to modern DC. You need to embrace individual node failure and that's not something you can just hack in.
    - shrubble 6y ago
      Can you provide an example of a company that migrated their mainframe based highly-available transactions oriented workload, to what you mention?
    - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
      This is actually a good comment - look at a datacenter and squint, and tell me - is it not justa a new mainframe? AWS, Azure and GCP are all proprietary, and all are producing larger and larger servers and VMs. They are basically rentable, virtualised mainframes at this point

ralphc 6y ago

To someone going into IT or programming at a young age (so, not me), would you recommend them to get into COBOL and mainframes? Will it be a career option for 10+ years?

konjin 6y ago
Cobol is alive the same way Latin is. Unless you're sure you can get a job in the Vatican you're screwed if you learn it.
- gumby 6y ago
  I understand and agree with your point but hey, I got a lot of benefit from learning Latin, arguably more than I got for learning Lisp (which was is what I used for the first 10 years of my career. It was a fun and quite lucrative period). For graduates of my (very small) high school, Classics was the number one choice of college major and though I'm not in close touch with all of them I never heard any of them claim that they had made a mistake. Cobol is sort of like Lisp* in that regard: the options are quite limited, but as the supply is too you'll probably do better than fine financially. * wow is it painful to write that.
  - konjin 6y ago
    Lisp is interesting because it always has a first mover advantage in any field, i.e. I can code up something that does 80% of what I want in 10% of the time of any other language. Cobol's only use is that it's entrenched. Which is why I used the vatican comparison.
    - kazinator 6y ago
      In a nutshell, Cobol fails to inspire throngs of youngsters to write "toy Cobol" implementations. It is also relatively rare for new languages cite Cobol as an inspiration for any of their features. Cobol has a feature whereby dissimilar structures can be assigned. The structure members which have the same names are identified between the structures and the data is moved accordingly. Or something like that. A programming language which has such a thing could claim to have had that inspired by Cobol. If I ever add that to TXR Lisp, I will be sure to drop a Cobol reference into the documentation. I might have learned about this via Knuth; I think there is a mention of it in some passage in TAOCP.

leokennis 6y ago

Anecdote too. I work for a large bank too, and >95% of our business has now moved off the mainframe. Took about 8 years to migrate. I’m not savvy on the costs, but I think the main benefit of ditching the mainframe is you can start using the IT tools, expertise, workflows, languages, frameworks, best practices etc. that 99% of the world is using. With the mainframe, you’re in sort of a shielded of nook of the software world, where everything is fast and stable but also juuust a little different.

freetanga 6y ago

same role, across European banking sector. Key theme is slimming down the mainframe to bare basics, then take out either batch, or DB2, and then see to pull the trigger on the rest, 6y horizon...