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Mainframes, COBOL, and databases that store data in formats that replicate the hard limits of paper punch cards are a real problem. Banks, insurers, and governm

Mainframes, COBOL, and databases that store data in formats that replicate the hard limits of paper punch cards are a real problem. Banks, insurers, and governmental institutions won't get rid of them and choose to surround those fossils of IT with layer upon layer of tech that gets outdated the moment it gets delivered. I was on a project where we were told to come up with an alternative way of encoding UUID4s, because "bank X runs their DB on a mainframe and they only have N bytes they can use for an ID." It used to be a given that nobody wanted their bank to run on anything, but mainframes. Now we'd rather they used cloud computing and Postgres. Mainframes have had their day. They may have a future, but they need modern databases and development tools.

that_guy_iain 5y ago
> It used to be a given that nobody wanted their bank to run on anything, but mainframes. Now we'd rather they used cloud computing and Postgres. Mainframes have had their day. They may have a future, but they need modern databases and development tools. I suspect you ask random Joe on the street they would say they would rather be on a mainframe. Also, I would much rather my bank didn't host on AWS, GCP, Azure, etc.
- samus 5y ago
  The technological state of the art at the backend is a circle. You don't have to squint that hard to see the similarities between a hypervisor running hundreds of VMs and a mainframe running hundreds of batch jobs. The difference is just that the mainframe is usually (but not always) co-located with the bank. But small bank branches might completely lack mainframe systems on their own.
- mmis1000 5y ago
  Mainframe nowadays do support modern language and modern tech stack. It's just no one willing to move on to the next stack.(or probably too expensive to) For example, IBM z runs linux. Backward compatibility is one of the biggest selling point mainframes provide, you can run code written 30 years ago with all limitation and bug preserved as is. And IBM z can also run many program write for original ibm/360 unmodified. Probably many ones decided to do so.
seabird 5y ago
"Technologies that replicate the hard limits of paper punch cards" and "mainframe" are not necessarily synonymous. You can make bad decisions with any given set of hardware/software you choose to use. Mainframes have outrageous transaction processing and reliability/redundancy capabilities. If anything, mainframes and modern programming techniques for them are underrated, largely because dumb licensing on the tooling keeps people from realizing their capabilities.

that_guy_iain 5y ago

> It used to be a given that nobody wanted their bank to run on anything, but mainframes. Now we'd rather they used cloud computing and Postgres. Mainframes have had their day. They may have a future, but they need modern databases and development tools. I suspect you ask random Joe on the street they would say they would rather be on a mainframe. Also, I would much rather my bank didn't host on AWS, GCP, Azure, etc.

samus 5y ago
The technological state of the art at the backend is a circle. You don't have to squint that hard to see the similarities between a hypervisor running hundreds of VMs and a mainframe running hundreds of batch jobs. The difference is just that the mainframe is usually (but not always) co-located with the bank. But small bank branches might completely lack mainframe systems on their own.
mmis1000 5y ago
Mainframe nowadays do support modern language and modern tech stack. It's just no one willing to move on to the next stack.(or probably too expensive to) For example, IBM z runs linux. Backward compatibility is one of the biggest selling point mainframes provide, you can run code written 30 years ago with all limitation and bug preserved as is. And IBM z can also run many program write for original ibm/360 unmodified. Probably many ones decided to do so.

seabird 5y ago

"Technologies that replicate the hard limits of paper punch cards" and "mainframe" are not necessarily synonymous. You can make bad decisions with any given set of hardware/software you choose to use. Mainframes have outrageous transaction processing and reliability/redundancy capabilities. If anything, mainframes and modern programming techniques for them are underrated, largely because dumb licensing on the tooling keeps people from realizing their capabilities.