[mrlebowski]

The author paints too grim a picture of mainframes. Isn't legacy code supposed to be that way? As far as I know, not many new code projects are being done on mainframes. But whatever is there, has to be maintained/upgraded. Mainframes are NOT as difficult to use as the author says. They power most of the big life/general insurance companies, and they do interface well with front-ends [with XSLs in middle to convert from/to string streams]. I have worked for two years on mainframes, and loved the simple editor. Like with any command-line type editor, it has its quirks, but once you learn it, it is very fast. Also, z/OS has some version control systems (Endevour), and really good debuggers.

[AndrewDucker]

Absolutely.

After all, you can happily run DB2 on Z/OS, and access everything via stored procs from smaller machines. his gives you external access to data without going through green screens.

[thismat]

Some people still refuse to invest in DB2 though, and so you're stuck with VSAM/Flatfiles for your data. It's a horrible time sink.