4 ms·

It always struck me as odd that one the one hand, finding people with experience in this field seem to be very hard to find, but on the other hand, IBM makes it

by krylon 4y ago

It always struck me as odd that one the one hand, finding people with experience in this field seem to be very hard to find, but on the other hand, IBM makes it so hard for people to learn this stuff. I wonder if it didn't pay off for them in the long run to just put up one beefy machine on the Internet, offer free accounts to people or just a free hobbyist license like you can get for VMS. Are they paranoid about customers cheating to hitch a free ride?

bombcar 4y ago
Because it's relatively easy to hire someone with relevant experience in other fields and give them the internal tooling and training from IBM. After all, IBM wants you to pay IBM to do this stuff for you. It's not like Bob from IT is going to play around with mainframe coding for a year or so and convince the boss to buy one.
- ethbr0 4y ago
  This. The mainframe model seems bizarre to people experienced in modern programming, because they can't imagine all the things that were different. So imagine you're a company selling low volumes (by modern standards) of exquisite computing hardware to highly demanding customers, in a world where... (1) there is no Internet, (2) there are no personal computers, (3) most people don't know how to use a computer, much less program one. You'd probably come up with a model that looked a lot like "We'll sell you the machine + train you how to program and use it!" as a package. And then after the world changed, but your offering was very polished, you probably just wouldn't overhaul it. Because it's been working fine for 50 years.
- naikrovek 4y ago
  > It's not like Bob from IT is going to play around with mainframe coding for a year or so and convince the boss to buy one. not currently, IBM pretty much actively prevents this with their current pricing. it could happen, and would, if people were allowed to learn this on their own. Mainframes are very good at some things. Far better than commodity hardware is today.
mr_toad 4y ago
It wouldn’t directly generate any sales commissions.
mharig 4y ago
> offer free accounts to people AFAIR, they offer the possibility for a one year free access to a node (Linux/IFL?). I do not remember if it is part of IBM Z Xplore and I didn't find it again with a quick search, but if you contact them they for sure will tell you more. Edit: I just found https://www.openmainframeproject.org/ https://www.openmainframeproject.org/

by krylon 4y ago

bombcar 4y ago

Because it's relatively easy to hire someone with relevant experience in other fields and give them the internal tooling and training from IBM. After all, IBM wants you to pay IBM to do this stuff for you. It's not like Bob from IT is going to play around with mainframe coding for a year or so and convince the boss to buy one.

ethbr0 4y ago
This. The mainframe model seems bizarre to people experienced in modern programming, because they can't imagine all the things that were different. So imagine you're a company selling low volumes (by modern standards) of exquisite computing hardware to highly demanding customers, in a world where... (1) there is no Internet, (2) there are no personal computers, (3) most people don't know how to use a computer, much less program one. You'd probably come up with a model that looked a lot like "We'll sell you the machine + train you how to program and use it!" as a package. And then after the world changed, but your offering was very polished, you probably just wouldn't overhaul it. Because it's been working fine for 50 years.
naikrovek 4y ago
> It's not like Bob from IT is going to play around with mainframe coding for a year or so and convince the boss to buy one. not currently, IBM pretty much actively prevents this with their current pricing. it could happen, and would, if people were allowed to learn this on their own. Mainframes are very good at some things. Far better than commodity hardware is today.

mr_toad 4y ago

It wouldn’t directly generate any sales commissions.

mharig 4y ago

> offer free accounts to people AFAIR, they offer the possibility for a one year free access to a node (Linux/IFL?). I do not remember if it is part of IBM Z Xplore and I didn't find it again with a quick search, but if you contact them they for sure will tell you more. Edit: I just found https://www.openmainframeproject.org/ https://www.openmainframeproject.org/