"Tony Hwang" wrote in message
Robert Green wrote:
wrote in message

stuff snipped
Any one worked on mainframes like super computers?

Haven't touched a mainframe since 19 -seventy something and then I really
only fed it stacks of punch cards. Having punch card experience makes you
an old fogey these days.

I *nearly* went to work for Sperry helping to design a traveler system for
NASA parts. It was shortly after the "O" ring failure and NASA decided that
every part that went into the space shuttle, even a piece of wire, had to be
accompanied by a full chain of custody on-line. When the HR guy took me
around to meet the team, they all scurried away like cockroaches.

It turns out the Sperry was laying off senior people and bringing in young
pukes like me to cut salary costs. They had little interest in meeting the
people that were taking their jobs and I can't blame them. I decided
instead to work for an employment company that scheduled nurse visits and
was using spreadsheets to do it. You wouldn't believe all the things that
spreadsheets got used for until they grew too big. Then I'd get the call.
(-:

After that I made my living converting spreadsheets to databases and taking
on applications scheduled for mainframe implementation that had languished
in the queue for a year or more. Doing PC software developing was really
like being a cowboy on the wide open prairie. Conversion is a weird
business to be in. Sometimes it's easier than developing software from
scratch and sometimes you wish you had that option.

PCs and Windows is
not all. Disappointed. Never worked on Hexadecimal ALU, stuffs like
that? hard coax data transmission(not optical fiber).

I have a good friend that was a little older than me who was a mainframe
jockey like you g and a true believer that no PC or network of PCs could
ever touch a mainframe for most large applications. I would always say
"we're getting there!"

Looking at it dispassionately, there's actually convergence between PCs and
mainframes in that massively parallel PCs are hooked together using multiple
CPUs in much the same way. Clearly places like Amazon and Google have
decided that PC server farms are far better tools for their
transaction-based trade than a supercomputer. And transactions per second
was the holy grail back then so I assume that mantle has passed.

I learned some pretty valuable things from a mainframe jockey in my PC user
group. One was to document all changes as if someone else was going to have
to work on the machine. Or more importantly as if you were being handed the
system from someone else. As my memory fades, documenting what I do is
becoming more and more critical. )-: Oddly enough, I can't remember the
second, more important thing that he taught me. Sheesh. I can't even
remember whether there WAS a second thing that he taught me. I'll wake up
at 3AM shouting it.

--
Bobby G.