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The Mainframe World Is Alive, Even For Those Under 40

Posted by timothy on from the onions-on-belts-and-snowshoe-flippers dept.

willdavid writes with a link to a report by Jeff Gould at Interop Systems, about the definitely-still-around world of mainframe computing, from which he extracts: "Last week I had the occasion to visit SHARE, the premier mainframe conference, which was held in San Jose just down the road from where I live. Based on what I saw, there is one thing I can tell you for sure, and that is that Cobol is not dead. And neither is the mainframe. When I mentioned to one of my friends that I had been to SHARE, he joked that it must have looked like an AARP convention. But this turned out not to be so. While there were certainly a few 60-somethings strolling around the halls, the under 40 generation was also well represented. What struck me the most was not the advanced age of the people but the relative youth of a lot of the software being discussed." However, it's not all fountain of youth there, either. (Thanks, BDPrime.)

5 of 361 comments (clear)

  1. The good ole days by webnut77 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I spent 20+ years as a mainframe systems programmer. VM/VSE. Since then, I've learned Linux et. al. Man would I love to install Linux in a virtual machine. I'll bet it could fly.

  2. Wiki was obviously wrong... by neokushan · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Can somebody please explain to me what the hell a "mainframe" is/was for and why it might be dead?
    According to Wikipedia, Mainframes are a bit like supercomputers but better suited to tasks where there's a LOT of input/output data, but not a lot of calculation involved. Payrolls and such.
    As far as I'm aware, those tasks still exist today, probably moreso than in the 1970's and 1980's, so why would the Mainframe be dying out? Have regular desktop/server processors advanced faster than demand for this data calculation and thus are now simply adequate or is this article just a bit of FUD to make 'ol timmy look like he's doing his job?

    FYI: I'm most certainly under 40. In fact, I'm barely more than half that age, so excuse my ignorance on the subject; the only times I've really heard the term "mainframe" used is in Films, Games and cheap 80's TV shows. And slashdot.

    --
    +1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
  3. They are the money making engines by fartrader · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Basically the mainframe and the software it hosts really make the cash for most enterprises - and as a consequence any sensible management are loathe to replace it with something "newer", even if the systems in question are horrible spaghetti nightmares that no-one really understands, and maintaining them is a process of trial and error. Replacement would simply be "cleaning the inside of a tin can", no obvious shareholder value at all in change for changes sake.

    Also technology vendors have finally woken up to the fact that the mainframe isnt a dinosaur on the verge of extinction - for example making CICS transactions web-service enabled has made COBOL code just as capable of participating in a service-oriented architecture as a set of AXIS hosted java classes.

  4. Re:Not surprising.... by ryanisflyboy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Perhaps you are not familiar with what a modern day large server is capable of. The cost/benefit of larger systems doesn't work in every case, but in many cases it does. Not every application is suited to run on a cluster of low cost x86 systems.

    My favorite large server is the HP superdome. Check out some of the specs:

    - Up to 128 core.
    - Up to 2TB of RAM, usually you'd mirror this, so 1TB usable realistically.
    - Up to 192 PCI-X slots.
    - 12 power supplies.
    - 18 fans.
    - Partition the system up to 16 different ways.
    - Up to 32 GB/s IO bandwidth.
    - 273.1 GB/s memory bandwidth.
    - Cost, starts around $1,000,000 (last I asked).
    - Jump the CPU/RAM/IO around to different partitions as needed, without rebooting anything.

    The thing about this that is unlike your typical entry level x86 Enterprise server - EVERYTHING is hot swap. And I mean everything. CPUs, RAM, IO. Very few pieces require a complete shutdown to service.

    My favorite mainframe story: "A guy called to ask what procedure he should follow to reboot his mainframe. Tech support told him to just follow the same procedure he did last time. The guy responded, "but only knows how to do that." And so, tech support said "well, get him to do it." At which point the guy remarked: "Well, the problem is he quit 6 years ago."

    Yeah. When you need _UPTIME_ it is hard to do better.

  5. Re:Nuclear and Steam by pipingguy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    You might enjoy this link:

    http://www.kirsner.org/pages/jackSteam/jackSteamTextAlt.html