I'm 28 and I work in mainframes. Or rather, I write compilers for mainframes and I have to say that I disagree with the top voted post. Mainframes have an amaz

I'm 28 and I work in mainframes. Or rather, I write compilers for mainframes and I have to say that I disagree with the top voted post. Mainframes have an amazing CPU architecture that is different enough from x86 to really open your mind. Ever move 2GB of memory with 1 instruction? (Well 2 really if I'm being pedantic.) It's got what's easily the industries most complicated branch predictor, and runs at well over 5Ghz. If you're interested in that, you should check out the slides from Hot Chips. Oh right, and it's got hardware transactional memory. Now I'll readily admit that using z/OS through a 3270 terminal is quite painful, and using USS through SSH isn't much better, but thankfully mainframes now run RHEL. That's right, big iron runs linux. Yes, you'll likely have to recompile your favourite software, but you can run vim, emacs, bash, zsh, and whatever else you want, and you don't even have to deal with EBCDIC. As for the comment that there's no development on mainframes, well that's just plain wrong. There's a ton of development, to the point where nearly every single financial transaction you make in a day goes through a Z mainframe, and nearly all major retailers use one. You just can't beat the security and stability. Can you think of another platform where you can hot swap EVERY part? Reportedly, the Z in SystemZ stands for Zero downtime, and that includes OS upgrades and hardware upgrades. No, you're not going to write PHP, Ruby, or node.js on a mainframe, you're going to be using C/C++, Java, or COBOL (surprisingly good language in some cases). But you're also not falling behind technologically. This might come off as preachy, but I really do enjoy working on zLinux, it's a really nice environment, and I think that young people might actually enjoy the experience of working on something that's not x86.