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UK Government Department Still Runs VME Operating System Installed In 1974
Qedward writes: The UK government's Department for Work and Pensions is on the hunt for a new £135,000-a-year CTO, with part of their annual budget of £1 billion and responsibility for DWP's "digital transformation" to oversee the migration of the department's legacy systems which are still run on Fujitsu mainframes using the VME operating system installed in 1974.
My money is on this VME system being around for another 20 years while the mess of Java and Oracle(you know they're going to use Oracle). It'll be overpriced, late and won't actually work.
Just because something is old, doesn't mean it needs replaced. In short, why not just upgrade the mainframe?
I am always amazed how buildings constructed thousands, or even hundreds, of years ago are still standing although often in a state of disrepair due to neglect
That's what's known as survivor bias. The only examples you see of thousand-year-old buildings are the ones that didn't fall down. The ones that collapsed within a decade are long forgotten.
A modern-day castle might survive a century whereas the castles throughout Europe remain or at least remnants of their existence survive to this day
And yet, in the village where I grew up, and near countless other villages in Britain, there was a hill with a raised mound on top, which was the only remaining evidence of the castle that stood there 900 years ago.
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Port it to minecraft. There seems to be some good 1970's CS work happening there.
Sorry, I'm calling complete and utter bullshit.
I've worked on enough legacy systems to know they didn't start off with some astronomical budget. They built it based on a set of requirements, coded it in house, and then it gradually expanded over many years of service.
Mainframe applications aren't sexy or glamorous, they're built on relatively simple interfaces, and slowly expand in scope over time.
They keep running because eventually they're woven into fabric of every other business process you have until they become something you can't trivially get rid of ... because every other damned thing relies on it even if it isn't obvious to the user. You end up having to replace everything
My experience with migrating from legacy apps says you'd churn out a half asses solution, which isn't compatible with the existing stuff, and which can't be made so, and which would eventually be abandoned as untenable.
You'd produce some solution which might be good if it didn't depend on throwing away every other system which touched this.
The vast majority of people who claim they could produce a functional replacement for legacy software in a short period of time have never been involved in that kind of process.
If it was easy, they'd have replaced it by now.
The problem with looking for a "track record of transitioning a large enterprise from ageing mainframe technologies to next generation web, social, mobile cloud, Big Data and deep learning technologies" is that it's a set of requirements written by idiots who don't want to replace the system, they want something completely different which will involve re-tooling everything else that touches this existing system.
Put your money where your mouth is, apply for the damned job.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Because, as a student, if you hit it and it breaks you did something dumb and reduce the number of units for the class to use. However, as an instructor, if he hits it and it breaks, it was due for replacement.
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
What basis do you have for the claim that we "couldn't even begin to recreate" those structures? There are certainly some ancient structures for which we haven't figured out how they were constructed with the technology available at the time, but nothing that we couldn't reproduce with today's technology.
The sticking point isn't technology—it's economics. A large portion of recent development has been around cost-effectiveness. This is why we're able to have so many more material possessions, even in the face of stagnant wages (for most classes). Of course, many (including myself) would argue that we've gone too far in this direction at the expense of durability, but that's an economic choice we've made. Look hard enough, and you can find any product that meets your durability specifications—if you're willing to pay the higher price.
That being said, I do agree with the sentiment that there is more than survivor bias at work. My house was built in 1916, and has an unusually open floor plan for its age. Lacking CAD, the builders accomplished this by massively overbuilding—the floor joists (with are already quite thick) rest on beams comprised of four 2x10's laminated together. Despite its age, this house feels more solid than just about any other wood-framed building I've been in. I have no doubt that if it were placed alongside a newly-constructed house and both left to nature, that the 99-year-old house would remain intact longer.