Re: Is there a mainframe skills shortage?


"gary drummond" <spam@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:HMydnSNXAPZcp5bb4p2dnA@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Frank Swarbrick wrote:
http://searchdatacenter.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid80_gci1249301,00.html
?track=NL-576&ad=583919&asrc=EM_NLT_1201842&uid=1303979

Frank


Very interesting article, with more meat in it than the various FUD being
released about the "legacy" environment. A few of the links on the same
page also bring a little more *sanity* to a discussion on mainframe
skills.

I guess you define "meat" as "That with which I agree"? :-)

I thought it was distinctly vegetarian and have posted my reasons for
thinking so, in this thread...:-)


I agree that much, if not most, activity is in replacing the mainframe OS
with Linux, or other Unix-like OS, even on the existing hardware in some
cases.

So why are people doing that? Are they stupid? Uninformed? Listening to
Salesmen? What...?

Could it be that they actually get a better cost performance ratio by doing
so...? Nah... never...!

Also, that does nothing for the areas that mainframes were, and still are,
years ahead of most Win/Unix-like systems. Grid computing is about the
closest anything comes to mainframe scheduling, except for it's limited use
in a large transaction/database environment. The Integrated Recovery and
Step Control I used on Sperry/Unisys mainframes is also years ahead of
anything available, even on Sun 15K and other large fail-safe environments.

Totally arguable. During the course of my career I've seen systems I thought
were pretty unique and outstanding, running on mainframes... Case in
Point...I always loved the way the SCOPE OS on CDC Cybers would scatter
files across various disk drives (unless you told it not to) so that it
wrote them to the next sector that was becoming available on any system
owned drive. I/O was phenomenal. There were no DD s required; just a file
name and its organization. the system took total responsibility for storing
your data and retrieving it when you wanted it back... great stuff! (The
same system queued and sorted physical disk addresses so it could service
them with one seek, long before the IBM 3330 implemented that same
functionality into firmware...). The point is that there have ALWAYS been
outstanding and innovative features in various hardware systems (and, prior
to 1981, that meant, primarily, "mainframe".)

Are these features any less valuable when they are superseded by an
alternative approach? The answer is "yes" AND "no". Distributed systems
across a network pass data around and get it back for you, probably in close
to the same time the Cyber took. RAID systems will provide the same security
your Unisys IRSC provided, even if they do it differently.

We LOVE what we understand and are familiar with; we resist the idea it may
be equalled or bettered by something else, we wot not of :-)...


Education is another point I agree with in the above article(s). It sucks!

Kind of a sweeping condemnation, isn't it? Does ALL education suck?

I don't think so. It is much better today than it was thirty years ago. I
can remember getting bright eyed, bushy tailed, Computer Science grads,
sitting them down and asking them to do a three file merge in COBOL...

Most of them didn't even know how to approach the problem, yet these same
guys could write a random number generator based on a binary polynomial that
would guarantee never to repeat within so many billion samples... (Not a lot
of call for that in the Banking industry :-))

Today, they would look at you and say: "Why would you want to merge these
sequential files when you could have updated directly to a Relational
Database in ANY sequence you like and simply ORDERed the result set?" :-)

I guess that's progress... of a kind :-)

I don't think it is wrong for educational institutions to NOT teach COBOL
when there are superior alternatives that are in greater demand in industry.
The resources and time are limited; should an English Major be forced to
learn Latin and Sanskrit? (There was a time when they were...)

Some establishments are even querying the value of Old English for the
English curricula... Have a degree, but can't read Beowulf in Chaucer's
original dialect? How far away is the outrage that engenders in some English
lovers, from: "Write commercial computer programs but can't write COBOL?"

The difference is that today's graduates are not completely useless when
faced with commercial problems, even if they don't know COBOL. We see posts
here all the time from people asking intelligent questions about COBOL
formats, because they have never encountered them, but are being required to
deal with them. COBOL may be strange to them, but programming is not. Look
at Oliver...never encountered COBOL, expert in Java, picked COBOL up very
quickly and required only passing help from this group to do so. There are
others also...

A "programmer" can pick up COBOL fairly quickly; it may be much harder for a
COBOLler to pick up programming.

Hardware and operations are even more critical in their training
requirements than programmers. They can't even find relevant training, much
like programmers. It's also very difficult for current programmers to pass
on their knowledge because they write COBOL programs to implement business
rules, and today's crop is taught to implement algorithms with style.

Is it not possible to implement business rules by implementing "algorithms
with style"? :-) The two may be less mutually exclusive than you think.


When I had too much time on my hands in 1997-1999, I took a part-time
position at the local Community College. We had the full Academic MF COBOL
Suite-all the bells and options. There was a waiting list for the
different levels of COBOL, CICS, and IBM ASM classes. Most of the students
were from Russia, with the rest split between University students wanting
some mainframe classes, and employees from several large Financial Corps
in town-First Data, Mutual of Omaha,...

Scanning their website today, I noticed only a single COBOL I class each
session this year, no IBM ASM-just Intel, and no CICS. I guess they have
moved to more "modern" environments. It could be that the local jobs have
been outsourced to Russia or India, and there is no local demand any more,
or the companies do their own training.

Probably all of the above...


My local Metro here (KS), JCCC, has converted to mostly teaching the
vendor's certification classes, plus administering the tests-for the same
price as the vendors. My experiences working with people with A+, M$ and
Unix certifications, are not happy ones. The Brainbench Certs were *much*
harder, and related to the real-world compared to Win, Red Hat, or Sun
Certs.

In my view (or it used to be), the "modern" workplace is like the legacy
workplace, a few good people can carry a lot of not-so-good ones. With the
hype-riddled FUD being spouted by industry *experts*, who depend on FUD to
keep their jobs, I don't see a bright future ahead. The education
available today does not lend itself to helping, so far as the article's
major points are concerned. Outsourcing => lower # jobs => less need for
training => no classes. Articles like Frank linked to can help, if someone
(that *counts*) pays attention.

Er... I think you meant if someone (that counts) agrees with your position.
I am someone who has occasionally counted. I do pay attention; I don't
necessarily agree (with you or the article). Being of a positive
disposition, I don't like to simply disagree (I'd much rather say "yes" than
"no"); that's one reason why I posted my reasons for disagreeing :-)

Gary
<snipped rants, even though they are quite good :-)>

Pete.


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Is there a mainframe skills shortage?
    ... Grid computing is about the closest anything comes to mainframe scheduling, except for it's limited use in a large transaction/database environment. ... they would look at you and say: "Why would you want to merge these sequential files when you could have updated directly to a Relational Database in ANY sequence you like and simply ORDERed the result set?" ... The difference is that today's graduates are not completely useless when faced with commercial problems, even if they don't know COBOL. ... They can't even find relevant training, much like programmers. ...
    (comp.lang.cobol)
  • Re: COBOL Compiler for Windows
    ... rebadged Micro Focus compiler. ... to run TSO/SPF on your mainframe. ... Or maybe he wants a mainframe emulation environment, ... Why would a small developer pay several thousand for a .NET COBOL ...
    (comp.lang.cobol)
  • Re: Cobol coders: Going, going, gone?
    ... have been written in Cobol. ... There ARE talented programmers working in COBOL, ... I don't think it's about mediocrity of programmers, Robert. ... doesn't fit well in that environment. ...
    (comp.lang.cobol)
  • Re: Declining Cobol job market
    ... pursuing Cobol jobs. ... A lot of COBOL programmers (and RPG programmers, ... I used to use Dreamweaver and still do occasionally, ... homegrown system on the mainframe is not going to happen by having a good ...
    (comp.lang.cobol)
  • Re: cobol: its everywhere... but going...Google Maps!
    ... I will be doing very little CoBOL in our PeopleSoft ... environment, and I don't do any business programming on PCs. ... mainframe has another year before it goes away. ... Are they migrating it? ...
    (comp.lang.cobol)