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by shrugger
3688 days ago
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Whoa, that is super cool about how they trained you and everything. I have actually heard bits and pieces of sort of like folklore from my dad about CICS and other mainframe pop culture, it's always fascinated me in a certain sense. That there's another whole universe of programming that most people have never heard of or been involved with. I'm actually in the process of getting involved with the US Army now (I'm 21) so that I can get some schooling and stuff done later, but I've thought that I might spend my off-time for the next few years trying to self-teach myself NetREXX or something and try to land a job in some MegaCorp. I'm not opposed to writing code all day in a comfy office chair with full benefits etc, especially compared to living in a dorm with couple dudes eating Ramen and trying to conquer Web 4.0 or whatever. Just doesn't appeal to me. It's reassuring that it's a viable career path, I hadn't thought much about the new generation of mainframe maintenance, but from what my dad has told me about some of the people he's worked with it certainly makes sense that these big corps would be desperate for fresh meat right about now. |
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Downside of course is COBOL, Java, etc. But it's not like it's going anywhere soon. Nobody really wants to replace millions of lines of COBOL that work, and work well.
Writing a compiler for an ML-ish language that targets COBOL would be kind of amusing. Just because they're stuck with COBOL doesn't mean it has to be hand-written, right?
Disclaimer: I don't work with mainframes but I know people who do. Friend of mine quite likes writing assembly for z/Architecture. I don't know if she's totally sane.