Retired Mainframe Pros Lured Back Into Workforce 223
itwbennett writes "Businesses that cut experienced mainframe administrators in an effort to cut costs inadvertently created a skills shortage that is coming back to bite them. Chris O'Malley, CA's mainframe business executive VP, says that mainframe workers were let go because 'it had no immediate effect and the organizations didn't expect to keep mainframes around.' But businesses have kept mainframes around and now they are struggling to find engineers. Prycroft Six managing director Greg Price, a mainframe veteran of some 45 years, put it this way: 'Mainframes are expensive, ergo businesses want to go to cheaper platforms, but [those platforms] have a lot of packaged overheads. If you do a total cost of ownership, the mainframe comes out cheaper, but since the costs of a mainframe are immediately obvious, it is hard to get it past the bean-counters of an organization.'"
Cobol vs. Data Entry (Score:4, Insightful)
I learned and taught cobol for awhile, and i can say that cobol is not too far from data entry. It is way too much work to do simple things, and it is way too weak of a language for most things. Its functionality is low that it takes a lot of code to implement simple things. The compiler gives you weird error messages. The language is archane. It is a very miserable language to write in, and I wouldn't code in it for less than several hundreds of dollars per hour, just because its so boring and takes way too much typing to do simple things that would be a snap in other languages.
Re:Here is to.... (Score:5, Insightful)
The Mainframe does it job and does it well. Nothing comes close in Data Throughput Processing with the amount of reliability that a mainframe brings.
Computer 'Experts' have been saying that the mainframe is dead since the early 90s, but here we are 20 years later and I still have a job programming for it, and I don't see it going away anytime soon. Small to mid-level servers just don't have the capacity to deal with the growing about of data generated. Fedex does in the neighborhood of 2 billion transactions a day, you cant just wipe together a Beowulf Cluster and think it will do the job reliably.
Or the better question is. How much do you trust the Federal Reserve to run all its processing on Windows machines. Or Wall Street. Ever consider if a transaction there is 'lost' because a windows blue screen? Even linux machines arent as dependable as a Mainframe. The IBM Z boxes actually have their own redundant parts included in them already. Not to mention that it will phone in its own tech support request.
Mainframes are not for everyone, but they do fulfill their job well when you do need them.
There are also enough tools out there like SOA so that even Java "Kids" can write applications for them easily.
Mainframes run the world.
Re:Here is to.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh, why?
Mainframes are fucking rock solid, reliable pieces of equipment.
They do the damned job like nobody's business.
The only issue with mainframes is that we haven't kept the people along with the software we chose to run on them decades ago.
Run-on sentence FTW (Score:3, Insightful)
O'Malley said in 2000 there were more people in system programming than there are today despite the workloads having quadrupled which is quite an anomaly.
This is an actual sentence from the story. I guess reporters don't need to learn how to use clauses, and editors don't edit.
If E. B. White [bbc.co.uk] were alive today, he'd be spinning in his grave.
steveha
Re:Here is to.... (Score:1, Insightful)
From The Tao of Programming:
There was once a programmer who worked upon microprocessors. ``Look at how well off I am here,'' he said to a mainframe programmer who came to visit, ``I have my own operating system and file storage device. I do not have to share my resources with anyone. The software is self- consistent and easy-to-use. Why do you not quit your present job and join me here?''
The mainframe programmer then began to describe his system to his friend, saying ``The mainframe sits like an ancient sage meditating in the midst of the data center. Its disk drives lie end-to-end like a great ocean of machinery. The software is as multifaceted as a diamond, and as convoluted as a primeval jungle. The programs, each unique, move through the system like a swift-flowing river. That is why I am happy where I am.''
The microcomputer programmer, upon hearing this, fell silent. But the two programmers remained friends until the end of their days.
Language gender (Score:2, Insightful)
You know how Cobol is uber verbose? Guess who were programming way back when: female secretaries.
You see C with its almost autistic terseness? Who are using it? Buncha (male) nerds who can't talk.
What's my point?
I'll tell you after my next shot.
How much Scotch do I need to drink before I become an honorary Scot?
Re:Cobol vs. Data Entry (Score:1, Insightful)
Except for C having "+" "-" and "=" instead of "MULTIPLY units AND cost GIVING total"
So...instead of doing the sensible thing in COBOL ("COMPUTE TOTAL = UNITS * COST.") you would rather do this in C: "total = units * cost;"
I'm 22 and was hired 2 years ago as a COBOL programmer. The best part of working with COBOL is the same as working with any other language (to me, at least): Pushing the boundaries of what people think can be done with it.
Re:Cobol vs. Data Entry (Score:3, Insightful)
Which is allright if you're Sisyphus...
If I had to pick... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Here is to.... (Score:4, Insightful)
But I bet google loses lots of data. They certainly have had massive amounts of down time (by main frame standards).
search from 2 places, different results. They don't have highly critical data, so they can sloppily store and syncronize as needed. A liberty that Fedex does not.
Re:Here is to.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Does this mean that Windows has 100% "market share" in my server rooms?
huh. from what I have seen, (Score:3, Insightful)
Now, I'm just the Linux janitor, not a DBA, but when I see those problems on MySQL or PostgreSQL, I can fix them. I've replaced more than one MSSQL database with a MySQL setup, and often see orders of magnitude speed increases that I suspect are due to misconfiguration of the proprietary database. The open-source stuff is just plain easier to use, at least for Linux janitors like me, and has better support.
I'm sure Oracle and MSSQL are both fine databases if you know how to use it and you configure it correctly; I'm just saying that paying a lot of money doesn't relieve you from needing to know those things. You still need to pay for a technician who actually understands it. The advantage of the free (as in freedom) products is that there are a whole lot more people with real (that is, non-scripted, where you need to do something new or are expected to solve a problem beyond 'reboot and apply the redo logs') experience with the free databases than with multi-million dollar oracle installs, and that sometimes your expensive support people just shrug and say 'I don't know. why don't you upgrade your linux kernel.'
Sticking with the free stuff, using a search engine such as google gets you pretty good support for commonly used free software. Often better support than what you get when you pay lots of money for support.