My second thought about this was "no wonder IBM is largely dead outside of stodgy corporate IT. Nobody can actually learn to use it without dropping $100,000+ on equipment."
Back when I was at IBM one of the hats I wore was AS/400 administrator and programmer.
I miss working with it and would like to buy one for my home lab, but the licensing is a killer. I find used ones on the market, but they usually don't include the license keys or media, and without a support contract can't get them.
I really wish IBM had a hobbyist program. I wouldn't expect it be free, but I wouldn't mind paying a small yearly fee.
The irony is that IBM had one of the first Open Source communities: SHARE, dating back to 1955, shared software up to and including a whole OS, SOS (SHARE Operating System), well before Unix or home computers even existed.
It’s worse than that. Most of these environments are in the stodgiest corner of those companies. I worked with one a long time ago as a consultant where we struggled with an authentication related issue.
The response from the service owners was that they weren’t going to switch to a new, unproven methodology. In this case the “new” thing was around since like 1989 (this happened circa 2003). They still use whatever they were using today.
As a new hire, you’re screwed. Anyone getting into mainframes is insane.
I miss working with it and would like to buy one for my home lab, but the licensing is a killer. I find used ones on the market, but they usually don't include the license keys or media, and without a support contract can't get them.
I really wish IBM had a hobbyist program. I wouldn't expect it be free, but I wouldn't mind paying a small yearly fee.