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Everything going to "the Cloud" is just a backslide into the mainframe era, but with shinier graphics. I feel like the age of micros has ended, killed off by cl

Everything going to "the Cloud" is just a backslide into the mainframe era, but with shinier graphics. I feel like the age of micros has ended, killed off by clueless users with flashy phones.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
JohnFen 3y ago
It's just one of the usual cycles. Enough time has gone by that most people have forgotten (or weren't alive) during the last server era. They aren't fresh on what the serious downsides of it are, or why the PC revolution was such a step forward. But people will be reminded (lots are already beginning to see) and the pendulum will swing back away from using someone else's server. Then after a couple decades, the pendulum will swing back again. Rinse and repeat.
- rthnbgrredf 3y ago
  Could someone who remember the era of mainframe computing, which of the downsides could apply to the modern version of it (cloud desktop)?
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    The two main ones are that there's more moving parts to go wrong, and that you're at the mercy of the people running the server. When the server malfunctions, there's nothing you can do but wait for them to fix it, the provider can mess up your account in unpredictable ways leading to unexpected interruptions of service and/or loss of data, and so forth. There are numerous smaller things, too, such as reduced flexibility and such. Also, communications can and do suffer interruptions, and if you're using a remote server then such interruptions can be problematic. My point isn't that "the cloud" is a bad model, though. It's that it involves a different set of risks and tradeoffs. For a given use case, "cloud" may be the best solution. For others, it won't be.
    - xethos 3y ago
      > and that you're at the mercy of the people running the server Perhaps slightly dated, but still relevant and hilarious: The Bastard Operator from Hell http://bofh.bjash.com/ http://bofh.bjash.com/
agumonkey 3y ago
these wave are recurrent, the opposite will probably come soon after that
seanhunter 3y ago
That's a snappy take, but it definitely doesn't feel that way to me as someone who did use mainframes a bit and big shared unix servers(not mainframes) quite a lot at points in my career. The defining characteristic of the mainframe experience for me is extreme rigidity. Upgrades are practically impossible, scheduling time on the mainframe requires lots of forward planning, notice or having a close relationship with a sysop that you can buy drinks for to get jobs to jump the queue. Cloud on the other hand brings scaling on demand scale up/scale down for bursty workloads, very quick to experiment with different configurations etc. The exact opposite - flexibility is very much the name of the game. Shared unix servers (not mainframes) were also very different from cloud in this way but also had the difference that you were always in very noticeable contention for CPU and io with other users, whereas on cloud you are almost always on dedicated resources for your use case. I never really felt contention on mainframe workloads because they are so goddamn slow all the time it's pretty much impossible to tell if you're contended or not.

Everything going to "the Cloud" is just a backslide into the mainframe era, but with shinier graphics. I feel like the age of micros has ended, killed off by clueless users with flashy phones.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

JohnFen 3y ago

It's just one of the usual cycles. Enough time has gone by that most people have forgotten (or weren't alive) during the last server era. They aren't fresh on what the serious downsides of it are, or why the PC revolution was such a step forward. But people will be reminded (lots are already beginning to see) and the pendulum will swing back away from using someone else's server. Then after a couple decades, the pendulum will swing back again. Rinse and repeat.

rthnbgrredf 3y ago
Could someone who remember the era of mainframe computing, which of the downsides could apply to the modern version of it (cloud desktop)?
- JohnFen 3y ago
  The two main ones are that there's more moving parts to go wrong, and that you're at the mercy of the people running the server. When the server malfunctions, there's nothing you can do but wait for them to fix it, the provider can mess up your account in unpredictable ways leading to unexpected interruptions of service and/or loss of data, and so forth. There are numerous smaller things, too, such as reduced flexibility and such. Also, communications can and do suffer interruptions, and if you're using a remote server then such interruptions can be problematic. My point isn't that "the cloud" is a bad model, though. It's that it involves a different set of risks and tradeoffs. For a given use case, "cloud" may be the best solution. For others, it won't be.
  - xethos 3y ago
    > and that you're at the mercy of the people running the server Perhaps slightly dated, but still relevant and hilarious: The Bastard Operator from Hell http://bofh.bjash.com/ http://bofh.bjash.com/

agumonkey 3y ago

these wave are recurrent, the opposite will probably come soon after that

seanhunter 3y ago

That's a snappy take, but it definitely doesn't feel that way to me as someone who did use mainframes a bit and big shared unix servers(not mainframes) quite a lot at points in my career. The defining characteristic of the mainframe experience for me is extreme rigidity. Upgrades are practically impossible, scheduling time on the mainframe requires lots of forward planning, notice or having a close relationship with a sysop that you can buy drinks for to get jobs to jump the queue. Cloud on the other hand brings scaling on demand scale up/scale down for bursty workloads, very quick to experiment with different configurations etc. The exact opposite - flexibility is very much the name of the game. Shared unix servers (not mainframes) were also very different from cloud in this way but also had the difference that you were always in very noticeable contention for CPU and io with other users, whereas on cloud you are almost always on dedicated resources for your use case. I never really felt contention on mainframe workloads because they are so goddamn slow all the time it's pretty much impossible to tell if you're contended or not.