Re: One for The Ages

From the IBM-MAIN list

YMMV <G>

--
Bill Klein
wmklein <at> ix.netcom.com
> z/Journal Finally made the z/Bottom line (available online ... sort of in
> PDF format for some reason). Here is the article that I talked about last
> w.
>
> One For The Ages...
> Eric L. Vaughan
>
>
> Who would have thought it would come to this? The mainframe has survived a
n
> onslaught of misery, challenge and all-out conversion war to rise to a
> prominent place in todayıs business. The common knowledge of the ı90s that
> prophesized it was only a matter of time until the last of the big iron wa
s
> unplugged has been replaced by a new group of devotees in awe of the
> mainframeıs continued abilities to deliver. Ironically, these companies ar
e
> championed by the executives who didnıt listen to the ³wisdom² and kept
> using the technology that had more than returned their investments. Surviv
e
> it did, and in a grand scale that no one could have guessed. But unless
> immediate action is taken on a wide scale to reverse the current course, t
he
> mainframe will die a certain and natural death.
>
> The mainframe community focused on all the important survival strategies
> except one. IBM buckled down and leveraged manufacturing economies to
> dramatically drive down the price per MIPS. They also found ways to open t
he
> mainframeıs proprietary doors to the world of open systems. Customers foun
d
> ways to make their mainframe investments continue to be the benchmark that
> caused all other technology competitors to grow green with envy. But all
> parties missed one important point in the quest for mainframe survival: It
ıs
> all about reproduction.
>
> Itıs a basic tenet of natural history. If a race doesnıt reproduce within
> its breed, it becomes extinct. And the mainframe race appears to have give
n
> up on the reproduction system. You can see it as you look at the
> monochromatic color spectrum across the mainframe landscape > gray.
>
> Gray, as in the color of the hair of all the people who are responsible fo
r
> the continued growth, development, deployment, and management of the
> mainframe. We have an entire breed who is aging quickly; in fact, many wil
l
> be departing the profession one way or another very soon. There is no form
al
> call for cross-breeding. Something must be done. We didnıt come this far t
o
> be forced out by natural selection! Development teams at IBM are still
> crafting the very guts of the operating systems and many of the important
> technologies such as CICS, DB2 and others, in nearly the same Assembler
> language that has been used for the last 40 plus years. How many schools
> today are offering courses in Assembler language? What about IBM
> ³University²? Mainframe Assembler language is about to go the way of
> Aramaic. Any thoughts about ensuring that z/OS will still be able to be
> written, or even read?
>
> Attend any of the industry conferences around the globe, including SHARE,
> CMG, the IBM zSeries Conference and WAVV, and you see a remarkably singula
r
> demographic. Nearly all gray-haired and nearly all men.
>
> Take a hard look at your entire support staff, the programmers writing and
> modifying the very important thousands of lines of COBOL code and the
> systems people whose job it is to ensure the continued operation of the
> critical: hospital systems, international banking centers, scientific
> research facilities, national defense systems, air traffic control
> systems > your own backyard.
>
> Iıve had many conversations with people about this issue, and universally
> the response boils down to the same concept, ³Iıll be long retired by the
> time that becomes a problem >
> But someone needs to be! Itıs not overly dramatic to realize the critical
> nature of the worldıs infrastructure is still, and will continue to be,
> reliant on mainframe technology.
>
> And 15 years ago, the all-out assault to convert the mainframe to
> ³client/server² showed how infeasible that proved to be. So that canıt be 
an
> answer.
>
> This is a DEFCON 1 alert; itıs time for the board of directors of the
> worldıs corporations to map out a plan to solve this. Itıs time for IBM to
> ensure that the innerbreeding of 35-plus-year veterans are transmogrifying
> the new college grads to be able to continue to write and maintain the cod
e
> that is still powering the world today. CEOs need to wake up to the fact
> that although they may retire in the next 10 to 15 years, so will most of
> the mainframe workforce they depend on today > their shoes! They owe it to
> their shareholders to have a more forward view
> than that.
>
> CIOs must implement a plan that provides for crosstraining and a developme
nt
> plan of new talent. This includes systems programmers, application
> programmers, even operations support. IBM needs to communicate the same ty
pe
> of skill transfer effort to its customer base to ensure the investors of
> billions of dollars in mainframe technology that its investment will endur
e.
> Heeding our own pontifications, at illustro, weıve just begun training one
> of our 24-year-old Web developers in the fine art of mainframe Assembler
> language programming. These are the types of steps that must be taken.
>
> Or, we could wait until we all stop reading this magazine. It will be
> someone elseıs problem then. Thatıs z/Bottom Line.Z
>
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William M. Klein wrote:
> From the IBM-MAIN list
>
> YMMV <G>
>
Interesting Bill. Nearest I ever got to big iron v little iron was the
Datapoint computer, approx 78/79, but I was using it in single-user
'desktop PC mode'. Perhaps they were among the first in the minis, (but
I don't know); it could be configured muti-user 5 then 10 users. Then I
heard it got tricky, you had to soup up the configuration to have more
user stations. You don't get anything for nothing.

In the same vein thinking about replacement bodies, the provincial
government here went on a 'slash and burn' exercise some ten years back
- just like good ole straight commerce - where do you cut - well bodies
of course. Good target, health care - so hundreds of nursing staff and
ancillary skills got the pink slip. Some of course pursued medicine
going off to other provinces, while yet others reluctantly did a
complete career change. I felt for this one man - 40-ish, whole life
spent in recreational therapy for old folks, finished up selling real
estate. (Who knows, he *might* just have made a bigger buck if he had
the salesmanship skills - not something I have and suspect not that many
others here have either. Consider - if you were a successful motor-mouth
making big bucks, you wouldn't be wasting your time conversing here
would you :-)).

Anyway the province achieved its objective and in very short order wiped
out its budget deficit. As I've already indicated, because of their take
on oil royalties they are now again awash in money. Real easy money,
without knowing their percentage - assume 5% - that on $40 a barrel,
then $50 a barrel - and now we are close to going to $60 a barrel.

But just less than a year ago, the current Health Minister expressed
concern, "With our existing staff retiring, we are concerned how
difficult it is becoming to recruit new nursing staff". I wonder why.

Politicos or CEOs - when are they going to get the message and do some
forward thinking. (I used to in my youth, assume that as the 'captains
of industry' these guys knew which way was up - not now !)

Jimmy

"William M. Klein" wrote:
<snip> 
lopment 
me type 
of 
endure. 
ing one 
ler 
=2E 

Actually, it only requires a bit of imagination.  Just think of a new
term to describe mainframes and assembler and you'll have people
flocking to jump on board, not to mention that you'll become a guru and
get rich.

PL

Thanks for posting this, Bill.

I found it .

Comments below...Please feel free to post this response into IBM Main if you
are looking for mischief :-)

"William M. Klein" <wmklein@nospam.netcom.com> wrote in message
news:_43Zd.1225186$Zm5.188635@news.easynews.com...
> From the IBM-MAIN list
>
> YMMV <G>
>
> --
> Bill Klein
>  wmklein <at> ix.netcom.com 
in 
last 
an 

It's no more 'prominent' than anything else...

 
was 

Gosh! 'In awe'...eh?  Sounds like these people haven't  been around
computers very much...

 
Survive 
the 

No! people might lose their awe...? Surely not...
 

Translate that as: "If the price hadn't dropped they'd be history..."

 
found 
that 

Funny, I haven't encountered a single green person in the non-mainframe
camp. Haven't even met any mildly jealous of the 'awesome' success of the
mainframe... Guess these client/server people are just blind.
 
Itıs 
within 
given 
for 
will 

They are aging at exactly the same rate as they always have. When procedural
programming was king it didn't matter because new people coming on would
apply the same approaches and learn the same languages. That's how we
managed to use computer systems for decades without any change in the way
they were programmed. hardware advances shot ahead in leaps and bounds while
software advances remained static at 'almost nil'... Then computer science
replaced 'accepted wisdom' and new approaches appeared. Graphic User
Interfaces, non-procedural programming... Objects, methods, properties, and
events. Networked systems that had their own synergy and were greater than
the sum of their parts. All the stuff that is anathema to the
'dyed-in-the-wool' mainframe fanatic...
 
to 

And in the entire history of the planet, nothing has ever succeeded in
beating natural selection. This smacks of a chimpanzee complaining because
the humans have better tools.  Chimps could make tools and cultivate the
earth, but they never did.  (They do use 'tool's to extract insects from
rotting wood and to reach bananas that cannot be obtained with the hands
alone.) Result: Chimps are threatened with extinction, while humans take
over the world.
 
important 

I don't think so. Last I heard, IBM were using their own internal languages
(not available to the public) for this work.(It is possible that some of
those languages have been in use for 40 years; I guess some teams take a
long time to do anything...:-))
 

About as many as offer Original Sanskrit or Klingon. Why? Because the demand
is about the same...
 

I would take bets that IBM have that covered whether it requires greybeards
or not.
 
SHARE, 
singular 

The same group that are most resistant to change.
 
and 

Funny, I don't feel in the least bit threatened by this. Maybe it's because
my Bank dropped mainframes 10 years ago, I don't know of any modern
hospitals where the mainframe is a cornerstone of life and death systems,
ATC uses specialist systems nowadays anyway, and national defense I couldn't
care less about.

That's not to say that mainframes don't serve useful roles in many of these
organisations, but irreplaceable, life and death roles? I don't think so.
Even if they did...so what? If there is nobody around to program them
they'll be replaced. The world won't stop because COBOL died...
 
universally 
the 

Programmers are an altruistic lot, aren't they... :-)

 
critical 

It wouldn't be overly dramatic if that were true. But it isn't. Hasn't been
for quite some time now and is becoming less so every day. Hardware
platforms have less and less relevance in the design of modern systems. (In
fact, a lot of time and effort goes into making network systems device
independent. That's where protocols like TCP/IP come in... They run on
anything. Part of the success of the World Wide Web is that no-one is
excluded from it (except mainframes who won't implement bridges, and won't
lower themselves to speak the lingua franca of the web.) It is interesting
to note that mainframes can flourish on the web just like anything else when
they are configured to do so and have the necessary protocols available.
This mainframe vs client/server war is simply stupid. hardware wise there is
nothing wrong with mainframe technology and the only place it may suffer is
in price/performance. However, when it comes to software and development
approaches and methodologies, the mainframe is an 'ideas sparse'
environment. Things are being done largely as they have been for the last 40
years, and the author of this article seems to want it to stay that way...
His supporters will say these are 'tried and proven' approaches. But they're
not. The requirements have changed. Dramatically. The old procedural
methodologies simply cannot bring effective software to the mass market fast
enough to meet the demand. 400, 000,000 users a day will not become
programmers in order to get information from their own hardware.

You could get by with a procedural approach when the user base was a few
thousand corporate employees; when it is a tenth of the population of the
planet (and rising steadily), you have to work smarter.
 
be an 

This is hysterical blindness induced by self delusion. THOUSANDS of
mainframes have been replaced by client/server network. To kid yourself
otherwise is simply to admit that your seeing-eye dog was asleep. Just
because something may be unpalatable, ly, makes it no less true. Compare
mainframe sales figures over the past 10 years. Then map it against market
expansion during that time and how many they SHOULD have sold. It's no
wonder there are some long faced salesmen around.

(Actually, it's not important anyway. Even if you were right and the sales
of mainframes had remained as bouyant as they were in 1982, it proves
nothing. The platforms are not the issue; it is the mindset and software
technology that is critical.
 

Solve what? The demise of the mainframe? Why? If I run an insurance business
or manufacture orthopaedic slippers for pigeon toed Hottentots, why would I
care what happens to the computer industry? As long as they provide me with
a solution that works and meets the needs of my business, why would I give a
fricasseed cockroach what hardware they use? It is obviously 'none of my
busness'. Forgive me for not rushing to heed this clarion call. MY troops
can stand down from DEFCON 1 and sell a few more slippers, instead.

 
transmogrifying 
code 

Been reading Gartner again? Well, people believe what they want to believe.
If it's all so good, why the panic?

(And you won't catch me trying to transmogrify or any other kind of 'trans'
on today's college students....)
 
of 

And it will make very little difference to the world, which will simply
deploy other technology as it is required to.

 

No, they owe it to their shareholders to return the maximum possible on
their investment. It is nothing like the same thing.
 
development 

This is like telling a shipping line which has moved to diesel electric
vessels, that there will be a severe shortage of coal for steam power
boilers as the current crop of stokers become old and feeble cand can no
longer lift a shovel.
 
endure.

If they invested billions of dollars into 'mainframe technology' instead of
into corporate solutions, then they deserve everything they get... No
commercial investment is forever. Things change. markets, companies, and
even (Gasp!) computer technology. The investment needs to be topped up and
reviewed to ensure that the ROI stays positive. Further investment in an
outmoded technology doesn't really seem like a good way to do that...
 
one 

Sorry, I had to laugh when I read that :-) Wonder how the poor kid feels...
I remember having to learn IBM Assembler when I was only a little younger
than that... But I didn't have all my mates learning Java and laughing at
me... Teaching BAL to a web developer is like teaching ballet to a
steeplejack;  interesting as an intellectual exercise, but no use whatsoever
on the job.
 
It may be YOUR bottom line...

Mine is using the best tools for the job, whether they happen to be
mainframe based, or running on a bendix washing machine. And highly charged
emotional appeals in support of mainframes and procedural programming, would
be very unlikely to encourage me to go with either.

Pete.

..    On  15.03.05
wrote  dashwood@enternet.co.nz (Pete Dashwood)
on  /COMP/LANG/COBOL
in  39lk2mF62ehktU1@individual.net
about  Re: One for The Ages


PD> Funny, I haven't encountered a single green person in the
PD> non-mainframe camp.

Is the SuSe Linux distribution not yet arrived down under?

http://www.suse.com

 


PD> The same group that are most resistant to change.

Well my hair is gray. How about yours? Do you apply fresh color
from time to time?

 

btw, CIO = Congress of Industrial Organisations ...
 

PD> This is like telling a shipping line which has moved to diesel
PD> electric vessels, that there will be a severe shortage of coal for
PD> steam power boilers as the current crop of stokers become old and
PD> feeble cand can no longer lift a shovel.

har har har.


Yours,
Lüko Willms                                     http://www.willms-edv.de
/--------- L.WILLMS@jpberlin.de -- Alle Rechte vorbehalten --

Hinlänglicher Stoff zum Stillschweigen. -G.C.Lichtenberg

When I replied to this the other day, I couldn't remember my examples of
old things renamed as something new & exciting.  Here are a few:

- the very first computers had a very small instruction set - the
Whirlwind, for instance, had only 32.  Decades later, this was
triumphantly revived as RISC!

- the first disks had fixed length sectors and no overlap.  Later on
(S/36 for sure) this became the dazzling "fixed block architecture".

- client/server (whatever it was meant to be) was a slightly jumped-up
master/slave system.  Likewise thin clients.

I had a longer list but I can't find it.  But see my point: rename
"mainframes" as "aspect-oriented central control points" and they'll be
new and exciting!

PL

..    On  14.03.05
wrote  lacey@mb.sympatico.ca (Peter Lacey)
on  /COMP/LANG/COBOL
in  4235C498.1AEA12AA@mb.sympatico.ca
about  Re: One for The Ages


PL> I had a longer list but I can't find it.  But see my point: rename
PL> "mainframes" as "aspect-oriented central control points" and they'll
PL> be new and exciting!

They are already in the category of "enterprise servers".



Yours,
Lüko Willms                                     http://www.willms-edv.de
/--------- L.WILLMS@jpberlin.de -- Alle Rechte vorbehalten --

Eine ganze Milchstraße von Einfällen. -G.C.Lichtenberg

"Lueko Willms" <l.willms@jpberlin.de> wrote in message
news:9SrsvJ-uflB@jpberlin-l.willms.jpberlin.de...
> .    On  15.03.05
>   wrote  dashwood@enternet.co.nz (Pete Dashwood)
>      on  /COMP/LANG/COBOL
>      in  39lk2mF62ehktU1@individual.net
>   about  Re: One for The Ages
>
>
> PD> Funny, I haven't encountered a single green person in the
> PD> non-mainframe camp.
>
>    Is the SuSe Linux distribution not yet arrived down under?
>
>    http://www.suse.com
>
> 
>
>
> PD> The same group that are most resistant to change.
>
>    Well my hair is gray. How about yours? Do you apply fresh color
> from time to time?
>

Lol! For some unaccountable reason (maybe the Swiss monkey glands, or the
massive doses of vitamins and a good sex life...) my hair has not gone grey
yet. Although there is much less of it than there was, it remains the same
brown it has always been. Grey is encroaching at the temples and certainly
into the beard, but so far, there has been no need to dye my hair. Actually,
I wouldn't anyway. I shall accept my grey hairs with the feeling they were
hard earned... <G>
> 
>
>    btw, CIO = Congress of Industrial Organisations ...

Or Chief Information Officer...
> 
>
> PD> This is like telling a shipping line which has moved to diesel
> PD> electric vessels, that there will be a severe shortage of coal for
> PD> steam power boilers as the current crop of stokers become old and
> PD> feeble cand can no longer lift a shovel.
>
>    har har har.
>
>
> Yours,
> Lüko Willms                                     http://www.willms-edv.de
> /--------- L.WILLMS@jpberlin.de -- Alle Rechte vorbehalten --
>
> Hinlänglicher Stoff zum Stillschweigen. -G.C.Lichtenberg
>

I have some sympathy for this as there has certainly been some 'marketing
reinvention' during the history of commercial computing.

But there is a real danger (and I see it all the time, particularly when
explaining OO concepts to COBOL people), that something will be labelled as
something it isn't, just because that label is within the experience of the
person concerned.

I wrote somewhere else in this forum about the difference between having
ITSA hooks to hang new concepts on, and having ITSLIKE hooks to hang new
concepts on. We need to be very careful before deciding something is an
ITSA.

All of the examples below are ITSLIKEs, but that doesn't mean they are
replicas of a preceding technology.

It is all too easy to decide early on in a presentation "Oh, he's really
talking about yadayada... been there, done that, when's lunch?"

And that is one reason why COBOL people in particular seem to have trouble
with some of the new technology.

Object instances are NOT callable modules, but they are LIKE them, for
instance... (however the essential differences make them completely
unsuitable for use as if they WERE callable modules.)

Sadly, the differences are sometimes very subtle, but totally essential to
the understanding of WHY something is NOT what it appeared to be on first
inspection.

It is failure to recognise these differences and appreciate why they matter,
that all too often causes someone to give up and say: "Hey, this is just a
re-invention of stuff I have been using for years...what's the big deal?"
People who haven't been using anything for years, grasp it better because
they have no ITSA hooks to hang it on.

Sometimes, (and this is where I sympathise with Peter's point), something IS
a re-packaging of an existing technology with a few frills added, but we
need to be very careful it has been thoroughly checked out before we consign
it to the ITSA heap...

Pete.

TOP POST no more....

"Peter Lacey" <lacey@mb.sympatico.ca> wrote in message
news:4235C498.1AEA12AA@mb.sympatico.ca...
> When I replied to this the other day, I couldn't remember my examples of
> old things renamed as something new & exciting.  Here are a few:
>
> - the very first computers had a very small instruction set - the
> Whirlwind, for instance, had only 32.  Decades later, this was
> triumphantly revived as RISC!
>
> - the first disks had fixed length sectors and no overlap.  Later on
> (S/36 for sure) this became the dazzling "fixed block architecture".
>
> - client/server (whatever it was meant to be) was a slightly jumped-up
> master/slave system.  Likewise thin clients.
>
> I had a longer list but I can't find it.  But see my point: rename
> "mainframes" as "aspect-oriented central control points" and they'll be
> new and exciting!
>
> PL
>

On 14-Mar-2005, "Pete Dashwood" <dashwood@enternet.co.nz> wrote:
 
>
> Lol! For some unaccountable reason (maybe the Swiss monkey glands, or the
> massive doses of vitamins and a good sex life...) my hair has not gone gre
y
> yet. Although there is much less of it than there was, it remains the same
> brown it has always been. Grey is encroaching at the temples and certainly
> into the beard, but so far, there has been no need to dye my hair. Actuall
y,
> I wouldn't anyway. I shall accept my grey hairs with the feeling they were
> hard earned... <G>

I don't mind a gray beard, and my very masculine (that's my story and I'm
sticking to it) hair pattern doesn't show up gray that well on my head.

The other day, I had my youngest grandchild on my lap watching the screen sa
ver
on my computer randomly select pictures.   He saw a photo of balloons in whi
ch
we could barely see the top of the back of my head in the foreground.   He
yelled out "Boppa", and reached around and touched the top of my head.