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Arent mainframes good example of better technology that lost? It feels like world gave up on reliable hardware and started fixing it on software/multiple hw in

Arent mainframes good example of better technology that lost? It feels like world gave up on reliable hardware and started fixing it on software/multiple hw instances level

Borg3 3y ago
I think thats one of the reasons why Sun Microsystems disappeard. They HW was very reliable.
- effie 3y ago
  Nope. They made great software, and not so good hardware. They went away because dot-com bubble burst and tech world cancelled orders of the hardware. Also, bad business decisions linking their success with sales of hardware, instead of support for software. > "Sun is responsible" for the problem, said a project manager at a large European bank that was affected by it. The manager spoke on condition of anonymity. "Their architecture was fundamentally flawed because there was no ECC checking on the cache memory. This is something you get in even the lowliest Intel processor that costs a few dollars," he said in an e-mail message. https://www.computerworld.com/article/2585204/sun-fixes-server-problem--but-controversy-persists.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/2585204/sun-fixes-serv...
effie 3y ago
Yep, it's a dinosaur concept nobody with tight budget wants to pay for, unless they already do and money is no object(big Fortune 500 companies).
Brian_K_White 3y ago
I'd say instead of good, it's what I call gold plating. Not in the cheap fake not real gold way but in the "sure a gold plated muffler would be better than an aluminum or zink plated one", but is ultimately not the best place to invest that much resource.
lamontcg 3y ago
> started fixing it on software/multiple hw instances level Really we just don't care about it. Things like ecommerce doesn't have the reliability requirements that finance can have. In some cases you can be losing a million dollars a minute, and screwing up can result in the SEC coming to your offices and arresting people. You can't just issue a refund or a gift card to fix the problems. And instead of dealing with the sharp edges of the CAP theorem you can just buy one big machine that never fails. It is the kind of decision you rationally make when eventual consistency means that you might wind up in prison.
- pintxo 3y ago
  > It is the kind of decision you rationally make when eventual consistency means that you might wind up in prison. Thanks for this argument. I‘ll put it on my shortlist.
- MichaelZuo 3y ago
  Running a search engine or youtube on a mainframe would be great, it would mean searches, and especially sorting them, would work perfectly every time, where one could be confident that every matching result is indeed shown correctly ranked.

Arent mainframes good example of better technology that lost? It feels like world gave up on reliable hardware and started fixing it on software/multiple hw instances level

Borg3 3y ago

I think thats one of the reasons why Sun Microsystems disappeard. They HW was very reliable.

effie 3y ago
Nope. They made great software, and not so good hardware. They went away because dot-com bubble burst and tech world cancelled orders of the hardware. Also, bad business decisions linking their success with sales of hardware, instead of support for software. > "Sun is responsible" for the problem, said a project manager at a large European bank that was affected by it. The manager spoke on condition of anonymity. "Their architecture was fundamentally flawed because there was no ECC checking on the cache memory. This is something you get in even the lowliest Intel processor that costs a few dollars," he said in an e-mail message. https://www.computerworld.com/article/2585204/sun-fixes-server-problem--but-controversy-persists.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/2585204/sun-fixes-serv...

effie 3y ago

Yep, it's a dinosaur concept nobody with tight budget wants to pay for, unless they already do and money is no object(big Fortune 500 companies).

Brian_K_White 3y ago

I'd say instead of good, it's what I call gold plating. Not in the cheap fake not real gold way but in the "sure a gold plated muffler would be better than an aluminum or zink plated one", but is ultimately not the best place to invest that much resource.

lamontcg 3y ago

> started fixing it on software/multiple hw instances level Really we just don't care about it. Things like ecommerce doesn't have the reliability requirements that finance can have. In some cases you can be losing a million dollars a minute, and screwing up can result in the SEC coming to your offices and arresting people. You can't just issue a refund or a gift card to fix the problems. And instead of dealing with the sharp edges of the CAP theorem you can just buy one big machine that never fails. It is the kind of decision you rationally make when eventual consistency means that you might wind up in prison.

pintxo 3y ago
> It is the kind of decision you rationally make when eventual consistency means that you might wind up in prison. Thanks for this argument. I‘ll put it on my shortlist.
MichaelZuo 3y ago
Running a search engine or youtube on a mainframe would be great, it would mean searches, and especially sorting them, would work perfectly every time, where one could be confident that every matching result is indeed shown correctly ranked.