I encourage young software engineers to seriously look at Mainframe development as a possible career path. Currently there is an aging knowledge base that needs to be replaced. Also, that world lends itself more to continually leveling up (i.e. experience matters more) than the typical development world where technologies change so fast.
On the down side it's much harder to bootstrap an environment for doing side projects on the mainframe. The hercules emulator makes it possible locally but it's a pain [0]. However, I think IBM provides sandox's for people to mess around with and all that requires is some minimal sign up and a TN3270 terminal emulator.
The world runs on them but so far isn’t willing to pay for the skills. It also resigns you to the world of legacy code and tech debt. The person who has to ask for budget to fix problems from 30 years ago is very under appreciated. (“What new functionality am I getting for all that money?”)
IBM is also a very painful vendor. They’re in the audit and share buyback business. They struggle to innovate. (One can argue with their track record on innovation they really should just milk the existing contracts and buy back shares)
> Currently there is an ageing knowledge base that needs to be replaced.
No, there are lots of companies that need to modernise their tech stack :)
I've been using a personal and business bank account with no mainframes involved for about 6 years now. Golang, microservices, Cassandra/Postgres. Progress is great to see.
On the down side it's much harder to bootstrap an environment for doing side projects on the mainframe. The hercules emulator makes it possible locally but it's a pain [0]. However, I think IBM provides sandox's for people to mess around with and all that requires is some minimal sign up and a TN3270 terminal emulator.
[0] http://www.hercules-390.org/