Yep. I'm sure I've said it here before, but during a contract in Ohio I was at a covered-dish supper for the church I went to there, and sat with a friend. His nephew, visiting from California sat with us. The nephew, it developed, was majoring in computer design, so I trolled before him the line about mainframes going away. He kindly but firmly informed me that only one or two banks still use mainframes, and they're both going to the cloud next year.
That was in, let's see...wow, 2009. Not as recently as I thought. (Time flies, I guess, when you're having fun working in mainframes.) Still, that's what they were teaching in colleges ten years ago - still, after at least three decades - and I don't doubt they're doing it still. About Visual Basic, though, I don't get the impression it's a niche product. I've never gotten past VBA and VBScript, myself, but judging by the reqs I see out there VB is very much alive and well. --- Bob Bridges, [email protected], cell 336 382-7313 /* Even the cleverest and most inevitable scientific reasoning must bow before the presence of even the crudest fact. -Isaac Asimov */ -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Bill Johnson Sent: Wednesday, March 17, 2021 12:22 No, they become niche products. Another one was Powerbuilder. SAP was hot in the 90’s too. Oracle was going to replace DB2. It didn’t. I remember the guy who claimed the mainframe was going to be gone by 2000. He was wrong too. --- On Wednesday, March 17, 2021, 12:18 PM, Bob Bridges <[email protected]> wrote: I forgot to ask in my last post: Bill, are you laboring under the impression that Visual Basic was a flash in the pan and then died away? That's not what I observe. -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Bill Johnson Sent: Tuesday, March 16, 2021 15:58 Too many have bought the mainframe is dead idiocy. For decades. The mainframe still processes the vast majority of important work and will for decades to come, long after most of us here are gone. Yes, plenty of kids are doing more “fun” work. It reminds me of 25 years ago when Microsoft certification was the hot tech. I’ve seen dozens of fads come and go that didn’t have the staying power of the good old IBM mainframe. Visual Basic anyone! Oracle was going to replace DB2 said numerous “experts”. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
