fyi
I thought I was one of the last of the Mohicans when I graduated college with a concentration in COBOL programming in 1987. Well, it kept me fed for eighteen years before I moved over into quality assurance, so no complaints.
Mainframes work. Only now are server clusters even getting close to the data throughput speed and bulletproof reliability. The problem is getting “latest-and-greatest” obsessed execs to realize this.
}:-)4
Bah. That's a mini. A mainframe is trailer-truck sized.
With a 9.5 percent unemployment rate, it shouldn’t be too hard to find people willing to work cheap and be retrained in Mainframe systems.
There is no reason to keep a 40 year old mainframe.
Communities are getting swindled out of millions because they don't have people competent enough to understand computers running their computer systems departments.
I know this because I worked for one. There was a database administrator who did not know how to turn on the database.
A senior level programmer who took 6 months to write an application that I finally wrote for him in 6 hours. He had to call a MEETING of 6 people to debug some code that turned out to be something as simple as trying to write 50 characters into a space allocated only for 40. It took me 3 minutes to find this- before everyone even sat down at the meeting.
They spent $250,000 for a ‘xml interface’ to copy data from one table to another. At the meeting where I called them to explain this, I DID IT in front of them in about 5 minutes. They just wanted to be able to market that they had an ‘XML interface and expected us to pay for its development.
When I asked my manager to get our $250,000 back she said that there was no process for returning funds that were already spent.
When we brought this up with the company they said they would give us 'free hours' of ‘tech support’. I asked them how much tech support would I need for a 5 minute operation. (As an aside they told me that once I left the remaining employees would probably need every minute of it- because they would not remember how to do it)
This is your tax dollars at work. And it is exactly the same people who will be running Obamacare.
And when I finished my contract there they hired cousin Jeffrey from the Parks Department to fill my spot- This guy was mowing lawns on Friday and writing software on Monday. I had to show him how to turn on the computer.
Saw an article in a paper some time ago about a guy who had a thriving typewriter sales business—until the computers took over and he had to close.
But as Paul Harvey says, here’s the rest of the story. He started getting calls from old customers who didn’t like or convert to computers and needed their typewriters repaired. He now has a thriving repair business.
So it doesn’t always happen that obsolete tools/machines immediately disappear after a new product comes on the market. (The exception being the 8 track tape player—which if you are too young to remember, don’t ask.)
Who knows? Maybe clever and inventive buggy whip makers evolved into S&M shop owners.
You know a developer is too young in an interview when you ask him, “What’s a S0C4?”, and his reply is “Too keep your feet warm.”
I spent 20 years as a mainframe systems developer writing assembler code, with expertise in job accounting, performance management, MQSeries, VTAM, etc., etc. If you know anybody who is hiring, let me know.
-PJ
Universities not knowing what the private sector wants and needs? Who’da thunk it?
The problem with the people who say “just move the app over to SQL or C#” etc. - businesses just won’t do this unless there is ABSOLUTELY no other alternative. Too risky. If you’ve got an app that is 1M lines of code and battle tested over DECADES - it’s just too painful to think about starting over.
Since we’re stuck with legacy code we’ll be stuck with legacy machines for some time to come. It’s the way of the world.
ping
An old IBM 1401 Autocoder programmer here...
You could write programs to make the big chain-driven printers play tunes.
Here’s a great example (”Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head”) that someone posted on that new-fangled Internet-thingie:
http://www.ed-thelen.org/1401Project/Mak-1403_raindrops.mp3
(The tune starts after a few seconds of noise.)