"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

"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.