This week we’re talking about mainframes with Cameron Seay, Adjunct Professor at East Carolina University and a member of the Governing Board of the Open Mainframe Project. If you’ve been curious about mainframes, this show will be a great guide.

Cameron explains exactly what a mainframe is and how it’s different from the cloud. We talk COBOL and the state of education and opportunities around that language. We cover the state-of-the-art in mainframe land, System Z, Linux on mainframes, and more.

Discuss on Changelog News

Changelog++ members save 2 minutes on this episode because they made the ads disappear. Join today!

Sponsors:

• Sentry – Working code means happy customers. That’s exactly why teams choose Sentry. From error tracking to performance monitoring, Sentry helps teams see what actually matters, resolve problems quicker, and learn continuously about their applications - from the frontend to the backend. Use the code CHANGELOG and get the team plan free for three months.
  
• Postman – Build APIs together — More than 20 million developers use Postman for building and using APIs. Postman simplifies each step of the API lifecycle and streamlines collaboration so you can create better APIs—faster.
  
• Fly.io – The home of Changelog.com — Deploy your apps and databases close to your users. In minutes you can run your Ruby, Go, Node, Deno, Python, or Elixir app (and databases!) all over the world. No ops required. Learn more at fly.io/changelog and check out the speedrun in their docs.
  
• Fastly – Our bandwidth partner. Fastly powers fast, secure, and scalable digital experiences. Move beyond your content delivery network to their powerful edge cloud platform. Learn more at fastly.com
  

Featuring:

• Cameron Seay – Twitter, LinkedIn
• Adam Stacoviak – Mastodon, Twitter, GitHub, LinkedIn, Website
• Jerod Santo – Mastodon, Twitter, GitHub, LinkedIn

Show Notes:

• Open Mainframe Project


• IBM zSystems

Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Timestamps:

(00:00 ) - This week on The Changelog
(01:16 ) - Sponsor: Sentry
(01:56 ) - Start the show!
(04:40 ) - What is a Mainframe?
(08:39 ) - What exactly is an IBM Z Mainframe?
(12:16 ) - What hardware makes up a Mainframe?
(15:50 ) - How is Mainframe different than HPC?
(22:58 ) - Sponsor: Postman
(24:13 ) - Should devs learn COBOL?
(27:43 ) - What's the interface to use a Mainframe?
(31:52 ) - Will IBM always own the Mainframe?
(34:19 ) - What flavors of Linux run on Mainframe?
(36:15 ) - The Open Mainframe Project
(37:56 ) - COBOL misconceptions
(40:11 ) - Demand for COBOL devs
(42:46 ) - How do you attract devs to this world?
(53:24 ) - What the path to get in?
(58:35 ) - The BIG opportunity
(1:02:25 ) - Thank you Cindy Harris!
(1:03:04 ) - Outro