The Mainframe Is Not Dead

A good article by Hiawatha Bray in today’s Boston Globe. He points out that many of our mainframe programmers have died, are dying or are retiring.

Many of them, like me, started their working life writing software for a machine that filled a room. I can recall seeing the first Honeywell machine; the tapes weighed twenty-five pounds. Today, my five pound ThinkPad has more power than the Honeywell D1000.

While you may think that mainframes have gone away, let me assure you that they have not. Most mammoth companies and governments could not function without today’s mainframe, which, by the way, takes up a lot less space, uses a lot less energy and is a hell of a lot more powerful and easier to use than the D1000.

The problem is that there are very few young people being trained as mainframe programmers. Mainframes are no longer taught in schools, so any training is basically on-the-job, just as mine was. I think a young technically-oriented person who wanted to get into programming would do well by becoming a mainframe programmer. The declining supply pool coupled with the increasing reliance on the mainframe to do our most serious work means that the new mainframe programmer will probably do much better financially than the Windows programmer.