What are you working on?

[debiruman665]

There's probably a high likelihood that a lot of us here work in the tech field or are hobbyists.

My work is fairly standard DevOps/Frontend developer and nothing exciting happening here.

In my spare time, I've been creating a subset language from PHP that creates a content generation engine to power commercial websites and has applications in SEO.

From reading some posts here I think we got some data centre guys here too?

 

[Tony1044]

I'm a technical / solutions architect in the infrastructure (servers etc) space. I've worked for many big names over the years - Microsoft, HP, Atos, Computacenter in both the public and private sectors.

I've just finished a role with one UK wide retailer designing and implementing a Citrix refresh, a DR data centre stand-up and Office 365 migration.

I'm now with an even bigger retailer and we're working on a truly massive Office 365/Azure piece (only just south of 500,000 global users).

One of the reasons I love being here is that it grounds me - sometimes I tire of the "big picture" views I have to take day-to-day. It's also refreshing to come here and remind myself of the stuff I've lost touch with and don't know to a great level of detail anymore as well.

 

[ubuysa]

Well I'm mostly an old IBM mainframe system support guy, though over the years I've worked with a wide variety of kit. I'm now retired from all that.

What am I working on now? Actually I'm just finishing off writing up a study I've been doing on the geological history of the deep lake here in Agios Nikolaos on Crete. I can hear you all yawning already so I'll get back to it...

 

[moosEh]

Well I'm mostly an old IBM mainframe system support guy, though over the years I've worked with a wide variety of kit. I'm now retired from all that.

What am I working on now? Actually I'm just finishing off writing up a study I've been doing on the geological history of the deep lake here in Agios Nikolaos on Crete. I can hear you all yawning already so I'll get back to it...

I hear The lake of Agios Nikolaos is according to mythology, the goddesses Athena and Artemis Britomartys refreshed themselves.

Totally didn't google it

And for myself, well I am here.

 

[Tony1044]

Well I'm mostly an old IBM mainframe system support guy, though over the years I've worked with a wide variety of kit. I'm now retired from all that.

What am I working on now? Actually I'm just finishing off writing up a study I've been doing on the geological history of the deep lake here in Agios Nikolaos on Crete. I can hear you all yawning already so I'll get back to it...

How deep is it? If it's <105m I could dive in it

 

[ubuysa]

The lake is 48.8m deep, several divers have been to the bottom. Legend has it that Athena and Artemis did indeed bathe in it. It's not an extinct volcano though, despite what the locals insist!

 

[Oussebon]

As long as it's not a live one, either...

 

[Scott]

Self confessed geek & self teacher here. All my life I've been able to pretty much turn my hand to anything that has electricity running through it, especially anything to do with IT/Computing. I seem to have a knack for reverse engineering just about anything.

I work as an Engineer by trade with RR but I tend to get involved in a load of projects that lead to ridiculous amounts of VBA requirements.

I dabble with programming (VB/VBA, Python, PHP, Java, HTML, C+(++++), C#, etc), website building (Via PHP, Java, HTML), Photography (Photoshop/Lightroom for the most part), video editing (Premiere, Vegas), Encoding/Decoding (Usually Handbrake) and a little bit of gaming (Mostly VR, Simulations). Mostly just for poops and giggles though, no real professional requirement.

 

[debiruman665]

I'm a technical / solutions architect in the infrastructure (servers etc) space. I've worked for many big names over the years - Microsoft, HP, Atos, Computacenter in both the public and private sectors.

I've just finished a role with one UK wide retailer designing and implementing a Citrix refresh, a DR data centre stand-up and Office 365 migration.

I'm now with an even bigger retailer and we're working on a truly massive Office 365/Azure piece (only just south of 500,000 global users).

One of the reasons I love being here is that it grounds me - sometimes I tire of the "big picture" views I have to take day-to-day. It's also refreshing to come here and remind myself of the stuff I've lost touch with and don't know to a great level of detail anymore as well.

When do you predict we'll breach the software stack event horizon where it will no longer be feasible to run bare metal, running Hypervisors, running containers, running linux distros, running container swarm management software, running dockers, running web webservices, running....

How many layers of matryoshka can we get?

Well I'm mostly an old IBM mainframe system support guy, though over the years I've worked with a wide variety of kit. I'm now retired from all that.

What am I working on now? Actually I'm just finishing off writing up a study I've been doing on the geological history of the deep lake here in Agios Nikolaos on Crete. I can hear you all yawning already so I'll get back to it...

Z/OS and JCL the worlds most powerful machines running on virtual punchcards.

So did you ever get to dust off the cobwebs and see any of the really old infra running banking systems etc?

Self confessed geek & self teacher here. All my life I've been able to pretty much turn my hand to anything that has electricity running through it, especially anything to do with IT/Computing. I seem to have a knack for reverse engineering just about anything.

I work as an Engineer by trade with RR but I tend to get involved in a load of projects that lead to ridiculous amounts of VBA requirements.

I dabble with programming (VB/VBA, Python, PHP, Java, HTML, C+(++++), C#, etc), website building (Via PHP, Java, HTML), Photography (Photoshop/Lightroom for the most part), video editing (Premiere, Vegas), Encoding/Decoding (Usually Handbrake) and a little bit of gaming (Mostly VR, Simulations). Mostly just for poops and giggles though, no real professional requirement.

PHP or Java? what do you prefer? I find they are the two languages that seem to have the developers who oppose each other the most but secretly envy features of each other.

PHP went down the whole JAVA style software framework design that doesn't really sit well with how Apache is already mapped onto the directories and .htaccess with URL rewrite is clunky as hell (don't get me started on templating). Java pretty much tried to emulate PHP's inline coding style with JML only much worse in syntax but better in execution because you can define your own tags which php doesn't do well.

 

[ubuysa]

Z/OS and JCL the worlds most powerful machines running on virtual punchcards.

Most mainframe applications are now 'real-time' and JCL is used only to start the 'server' application. TBH the backward compatibility that IBM maintained, all the way back to real punch cards (and I remember those), was one of the secrets of its success. Any business knew that if they upgraded their IBM mainframe all the applications they had would still run - Microsoft learned that lesson well.

 

[Tony1044]

When do you predict we'll breach the software stack event horizon where it will no longer be feasible to run bare metal, running Hypervisors, running containers, running linux distros, running container swarm management software, running dockers, running web webservices, running....

How many layers of matryoshka can we get?

Hmm...well if you're talking about "serverless" then that's a term I loathe even more than "cloud".

Ultimately they still need tin. It's just someone else's tin that they manage, maintain etc. Microservices, <whatever> as a Service, containers...they all need compute platforms.

I've seen numerous issues caused by management "moving to the cloud" and then thinking that's it - it's out of their hands now and Microsoft, Amazon, Google et al will look after it all.

Of course, the big players are keen as mustard to move everyone to a subscription based service because it means continuous revenue.

It's interesting that you mention IBM - right now of course, there's no way to move mainframes to say an Azure stack, so that's a big driver for keeping large chunks of infrastructure on premise.

 

[Tony1044]

Microsoft learned that lesson well.

Too well I feel sometimes - they are bogged down with legacy support and backwards compatibility. Sometimes I wish they'd take a page out of Apple's playbook.

 

[ubuysa]

Too well I feel sometimes - they are bogged down with legacy support and backwards compatibility. Sometimes I wish they'd take a page out of Apple's playbook.

You might well remember that great UK mainframe computer company ICL? They used to give IBM a run for their money, especially in the UK and more so in the local authority market. When they introduced their new OS (VME) it wouldn't run anything from earlier ICL platforms and businesses (and many local authorities) deserted a company that would do that to them. IBM are still around but ICL died out long ago....

 

[debiruman665]

Hmm...well if you're talking about "serverless" then that's a term I loathe even more than "cloud".

Ultimately they still need tin. It's just someone else's tin that they manage, maintain etc. Microservices, <whatever> as a Service, containers...they all need compute platforms.

I've seen numerous issues caused by management "moving to the cloud" and then thinking that's it - it's out of their hands now and Microsoft, Amazon, Google et al will look after it all.

Of course, the big players are keen as mustard to move everyone to a subscription based service because it means continuous revenue.

It's interesting that you mention IBM - right now of course, there's no way to move mainframes to say an Azure stack, so that's a big driver for keeping large chunks of infrastructure on premise.

My CTO has a massive boner for Azure's Platform as a Service for all those exact reasons you mention. He thinks there's no point maintaining the OS. We shut down our Jenkins servers to move over to Azure DevOps where you are locked into a limited subset of pre-defined actions. For anything complicated, I ended up just making a repo of scripts and have the pipeline scp the repo to a vps and use it as a controller for running tasks on the vps. Sort of defeats the purpose of the whole exercise to move to Azure though.

As for moving Mainframes to the cloud. Virtualising them would sort of negate any benefit of having them. At best they could let you rent time on the bare metal, but I think that's what is already happening. In uni, we had a time window where everyone could log into a remote mainframe and do some light work.


As for Microsoft they've done so much damage to the software industry as a whole, I'm surprised anyone still takes them seriously. Without internet explorer web development would probably be about 10 years in the future if the entire industry didn't have to first develop for chrome and firefox and then have to fix all the darn annoying trivialities that come with having to support your grandma who doesn't know how to use google, and just about every single government agency domain admin who thinks that internet explorer is the most secure browser.

Years ago I was making a B2B connection for a governmetn agency for a client of mine who was a prefered seller and they requested to me to make the shopping cart and website work without using cookies or javascript.

 

[Tony1044]

You might well remember that great UK mainframe computer company ICL? They used to give IBM a run for their money, especially in the UK and more so in the local authority market. When they introduced their new OS (VME) it wouldn't run anything from earlier ICL platforms and businesses (and many local authorities) deserted a company that would do that to them. IBM are still around but ICL died out long ago....

I do indeed recall ICL - one of my first lecturers was ex-ICL R&D. One of the most talented people I've ever met. He had the amazing ability to reduce the most complicated strings of Boolean algebra in his head.

Of course being a bunch of callow youths, it wasn't until years later we realised just what a privilege it was to have him teaching us.

When I say drop some of the backwards compatibility in Windows I mean longer term - a big part of my job is wrangling 10-15+ year old software to work in modern OS environments and more often that not it leads to compromising security somewhere along the route.

Of course, it also gives companies an excuse not to invest in new applications.

My CTO has a massive boner for Azure's Platform as a Service for all those exact reasons you mention. He thinks there's no point maintaining the OS. We shut down our Jenkins servers to move over to Azure DevOps where you are locked into a limited subset of pre-defined actions. For anything complicated, I ended up just making a repo of scripts and have the pipeline scp the repo to a vps and use it as a controller for running tasks on the vps. Sort of defeats the purpose of the whole exercise to move to Azure though.

Have you looked at Power Apps in Azure? It has quite powerful capabilities to help with this kind of thing. Worth investigating if you haven't already.

As for moving Mainframes to the cloud. Virtualising them would sort of negate any benefit of having them. At best they could let you rent time on the bare metal, but I think that's what is already happening. In uni, we had a time window where everyone could log into a remote mainframe and do some light work.

Actually, you can virtualise. e.g. AS400's but it has to be on i-series or I believe p-series hardware. The underlying compute platform is the problem, not the virtualisation of the workload.

As for Microsoft they've done so much damage to the software industry as a whole, I'm surprised anyone still takes them seriously. Without internet explorer web development would probably be about 10 years in the future if the entire industry didn't have to first develop for chrome and firefox and then have to fix all the darn annoying trivialities that come with having to support your grandma who doesn't know how to use google, and just about every single government agency domain admin who thinks that internet explorer is the most secure browser.

Years ago I was making a B2B connection for a governmetn agency for a client of mine who was a prefered seller and they requested to me to make the shopping cart and website work without using cookies or javascript.

I have mixed feelings about comments like this because on the one had I can agree with some of the points raised but on the other hand, they've kept me in a job. All joking aside, I'd prefer to work with Microsoft than say, Google., any day of the week.

 

[ubuysa]

As for Microsoft they've done so much damage to the software industry as a whole, I'm surprised anyone still takes them seriously. Without internet explorer web development would probably be about 10 years in the future if the entire industry didn't have to first develop for chrome and firefox and then have to fix all the darn annoying trivialities that come with having to support your grandma who doesn't know how to use google, and just about every single government agency domain admin who thinks that internet explorer is the most secure browser.

There used to be a common saying in the mainframe days; 'nobody ever got sacked for buying IBM', because business knew that IBM would protect the investment they already had in their applications and systems. I think Microsoft have both benefited from and been hamstrung by the demands of business to keep running decades old systems.

Microsoft (like IBM) serve the marketplace they have and it would be commercial suicide (as ICL found to their cost) to follow the 'best' development path if that risked cutting your key customer base adrift. To some extent I think it's the fault of business not wanting to invest in IT for the future, but to maximise the return on the systems they've had for decades, that's resulted in the platforms we have.

 

[Tony1044]

There used to be a common saying in the mainframe days; 'nobody ever got sacked for buying IBM', because business knew that IBM would protect the investment they already had in their applications and systems. I think Microsoft have both benefited from and been hamstrung by the demands of business to keep running decades old systems.

Microsoft (like IBM) serve the marketplace they have and it would be commercial suicide (as ICL found to their cost) to follow the 'best' development path if that risked cutting your key customer base adrift. To some extent I think it's the fault of business not wanting to invest in IT for the future, but to maximise the return on the systems they've had for decades, that's resulted in the platforms we have.

Absolutely this.

However, they are starting to do it in some ways.

Take Azure Active Directory - if you utilise AAD Connect as the (preferred) mechanism to synchronise your on-premise Active Directory then they will only guarantee support for release-2. i.e. if we're at version 10c they will only guarantee (and support) the compatibility down to 10a

They dropped support in Office 365 Exchange Online for Outlook versions below 2013 (although 2010 can be made to work) due to lack of support for modern authentication and changes to MAPI protocols.

It is yet another gotcha for cloud systems - the providers can, will and do upgrade their systems and expect you to remain in supported versions along the way. In some ways, this is good. In others, not so much.

 

[Tony1044]

By the way, @ubuysa you must be gutted to see what Ginny has done/is doing to IBM?

What is now - 36 straight quarters of decline?

 

[ubuysa]

By the way, @ubuysa you must be gutted to see what Ginny has done/is doing to IBM?

What is now - 36 straight quarters of decline?

Well not really, I never worked for IBM, I just looked after the MVS operating system (and derivatives) on several mainframes over the years. I've worked on (or rather with) both IBM and Amdahl kit - I prefered the Amdahl kit, because the sides of the Amdahl cabinets were red and that looked so much better in the machine room than the sky blue of the IBM boxes.......

 

[debiruman665]

Well not really, I never worked for IBM, I just looked after the MVS operating system (and derivatives) on several mainframes over the years. I've worked on (or rather with) both IBM and Amdahl kit - I prefered the Amdahl kit, because the sides of the Amdahl cabinets were red and that looked so much better in the machine room than the sky blue of the IBM boxes.......

mainframes go faster when they're red