Posted on 10/10/2009 10:26:34 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
"My co-worker, Tim, explained that our company, a major software vendor, is seeing its mainframe workforce rapidly approaching the age of retirement. Tim said IBM and most other firms whose businesses depend on mainframes are also dealing with this industry-wide problem.
"Since the 1980’s, PC’s and UNIX machines were supposed to have taken over the computing world, relegating mainframes to the scrap heap alongside rotary-dial telephones, suitcase-size boom boxes, and Plymouth Reliants. Indeed, most mainframes from that era have been consigned to the scrap heap – only to be replaced by bigger and faster mainframes.
"Today the number of mainframes is estimated to be 10,000. Since 2000, the processing power of mainframes has quadrupled in terms of MIPS. According to IBM, the top 25 world banks run mainframes, 80% of the world’s corporate data resides or originates on mainframes, and 71% of global Fortune 500 companies are mainframe clients."
(Excerpt) Read more at linuxtoday.com ...
BR14
I think I can code JCL in my sleep....
I’m looking for my assembler op codes...had a card with that somewhere....LOL!
I still have nightmares containing assembler op codes...Coded assembler for almost 20 years, and never want to see another BAL again.
i worked for a mainframe company from 1988-1999... some of the best years of my career... i think i still have a poster of a mainframe rolled up somewhere...
How about a nice BALR?
High Level Assembler - Opcodes overview
*************************EXCERPT******************************
The first table below lists the opcodes in the original S/360 IBM mainframe processor implementation, including all dropped instructions and a selection of the instructions that were later added. The other two tables below list selected opcodes for current mainframe processors. Colors have been added in these tables to show the changes in the design and - above all - the orthogonality of the basic design, which shows in both horizontal and vertical stratification. A legend is provided below each table.
bump
Assembler language, REXX, JCL, ISPF....add SMF
I think I can code JCL in my sleep....
Help! Help! I have been trying to get out of mainframe for several years, maybe I am borderline stupid, or blind, but I do not see a whole lot of SAN education in the local schools. I really, really do not want to have to spend $2000 a pop just for a 3 day-long class to get certification.
I still have the ‘green card’. Glad I still have my EZTRIEVE skills, even though I retired from IBM awhile back.
If you have an IBM greencard, that thing is worth some money!
Save that greencard. It’s worth some bucks.
I love the quote in this story from the young developer about efficiency, speed, and programmer control. The kids these days don’t know squat about conserving resources or making system calls. I think the engineering programs should at least teach the concept of writing code for speed, efficiency, and resource conservation (disk space, memory allocation, etc.). Sadly, their philosophy is that memory, disk space, and bandwidth are cheap and always will be.
LOL!
Empirically, we know to replace all references to OBAMA with 0 (zero);
0 4700 0000
We know that PELOSI and REID are << 0, so lets assume:
0 4700 0000
-2 0700
-1 0700
The machine (like most of us) would puke!
crap...I hope this don’t catch on. I have a nice little niche going on.
I wrote 360 code beginning in the mid 70’s for a major corporation. About a year ago, I received a phone call from the company IT department. A young girl at the other end on the phone ask me if I was the same guy that wrote program-nnn at the company. I told her I wrote that code back in 1979. She said it was still running, and needed changing, but NO one at the company knew anything about it. I graciously offered to go in for a day—for a nice lunch—and help them figure out what to do. I explained the program to them, and helped them make changes and reassemble. It was much fun, and brought back fond memories. But, that was enough for me to realize just how much I enjoy my current days.
I used to dream COBOL/DB2/CICS in my sleep. Glad those days are over.
The desktop rabble and the Unix mob keep making these claims that “their technology” is going to “kill the mainframe.”
They never will, because so many of these junior varsity hackers don’t understand the IMPORTANT things about mainframes: reliability, stability, uptime.
Period.
There still isn’t a language that is half as useful for business programming as COBOL - even after all these years. How the heck do these ankle biters keep missing the point? What does it take to drive the requirements through their skulls and into their brains? BCD math, report generation, formatting, etc — these are not optional in a business language. The moment that some snot-nosed kid suggests using floating point for accounting, you know that he should still be riding the schoolbus to work.
I didn’t hack mainframes as much as you did, but I sure as hell “get the point” of what makes them essential and impossible to replace in today’s environment.
Personally, I’m sorry to have seen Wang’s VS systems fall to the wayside. I thought they were a great bang:buck solution for smaller businesses. Ran s/370 code, implemented 370 architecture, but with a stack.
The company I retired from incinerated millions over more than a decade on their efforts to first move from S/390 to Sun which was abandoned midstream for Linux on Intel Itanium which was also abandoned before it was even half as far along as the canceled Sun project and then at great expense the S/390 was upgraded to modern z/Series hardware.
Most horrifying of all none of the management responsible for this disaster was fired.
That’s why I like to refer to the “Linux mob” — all these snot-nosed kids, clamoring for “open software” and all this rubbish — and none of these runny-nosed Unix children can keep their eye on the bottom line: the point is to crank out the data, as reliably as possible, at the lowest possible cost.
Mainframes are great for what I like to call “data factories” — outfits like ADP, for example. They’re not there to break new ground, to do research, or play with the latest whizzy software. The mainframe is there go be reliable, solid, safe, predictable and always available.... and do things like crank out people’s paychecks every week, without fail, to do the AP/AR/etc every month, without fail.
I’ve still got my Green Card. The System/360 and /370 had great instruction sets. But it had a bad design flaw: no stack.
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