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A comment on Ask HN: Why is there so little info on the web about IBM mainframe programming?. Parent comment

Re:Ask HN: Why is there so little info on the web about IBM ... by tgv on Monday November 28, 2022 @11:56AM (#33776004)
Even small banks. Basically every bank that was around 20 or 30 years ago started with mainframes (or very large minis) and still uses them. I'm not in that business, but I've seen the server rooms, and I haven't heard of a bank switching over to a rack of PCs, yet. There might be, but that would still hundreds, perhaps a thousand banks in Europe alone running on large-ish iron.

There might be less mainframes in total, though. The bank where my parents worked had 4 at different sites, but now runs on a single one, AFAIK.

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Re:Ask HN: Why is there so little info on the web about IBM ... by kevin_thibedeau on Monday November 28, 2022 @12:48PM (#33776809)
Unisys ClearPath Dorado is just a fancy Xeon machine running an emulator.
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Re:Ask HN: Why is there so little info on the web about IBM ... by freitasm on Monday November 28, 2022 @01:07PM (#33777119)
But the OS, database, network definition and workflow languages are still proprietary. Which goes back to the original question: where is that knowledge store/discussed?
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Re:Ask HN: Why is there so little info on the web about IBM ... by rejectfinite on Monday November 28, 2022 @02:35PM (#33778440)
Inside the company. Not gonna be a youtube tutorial lmao
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Re:Ask HN: Why is there so little info on the web about IBM ... by Moissanite on Monday November 28, 2022 @03:06PM (#33778806)
"Sup nerds, today we're going to be writing some COBOL, but first don't forget to hit the bell and smash that subscribe button..."
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Re:Ask HN: Why is there so little info on the web about IBM ... by count on Monday November 28, 2022 @03:45PM (#33779350)
Not even kidding, I'd probably watch some live-streaming of that kind of thing.
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Re:Ask HN: Why is there so little info on the web about IBM ... by warrenm on Tuesday November 29, 2022 @12:33PM (#33790556)
Twitch for mainframes... COBitch!
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Re:Ask HN: Why is there so little info on the web about IBM ... by bob1029 on Monday November 28, 2022 @07:36PM (#33782043)
> I haven't heard of a bank switching over to a rack of PCs, yet.

Right. The main limitation is the core software platform. This is an extraordinarily complex system that requires expensive regulatory sign-off/audit/etc.

There are some vendors in the space who are trying to do a new bank + new core. Even if someone had an awesome x86 clustered core system with 100% regulatory approval, any existing mid-tier bank converting to it would be an ~8 figure ordeal.

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