sai18

With agentic systems that are extremely proficient in the mainframe ecosystem, the failure rates for modernization should dramatically go down.

What we're attempting was not possible two years or even a year ago.

> I often wonder why mainframes never had a more modern easier to maintain and manage programming language designed for them.

Although COBOL is one of the primary programming languages for the mainframe, it can also run Java and Python as the others have mentioned. COBOL itself isn't particularly difficult to grasp for modern engineers, it's readable and has an easy to understand English-like syntax.

The challenge here is learning and becoming proficient in the end to end mainframe ecosystem including the intricacies of z/OS. It's a completely closed off ecosystem and is not as accessible to play around with for the average SWE as compared to windows or linux based development.

That is the current landscape today. Mainframe engineers are in high demand and good ones are paid quite well.

I've heard from a global bank, they have one mainframe developer in the team who is past 70. She manages a critical credit card service and gets paid in the upper end of 6 figures to work 20 hrs a week. She's the only one who knows that system. Lots of stories like this.

The problem here is that people who understand these systems are all retiring. Majority of the devs are over 60 and there's simply not enough new talent coming in to replace them.

So the real challenge companies are facing is will there be enough people to safely maintain these systems in the next decade. If they do not, it means failures in credit card systems, airline reservations, insurance claims and more.

That’s what we’ve seen with our customers. Some have only one or two COBOL developers left in some teams, and they are often the only people with the operational knowledge needed to keep these systems running.

They are either past retirement or about to retire in the coming years.

This is accurate to what we've seen in the market.

If they were large enough to need compute 30-40+ years ago, they certainly have some mainframes running today. Think Walmart, United Airlines, JPMC, Geico, Coca Cola and so on.

Like Bloop, we’re also focused on modernization, but our approach extends beyond code to include the people behind these systems and capturing the institutional knowledge they hold.

Absolutely true, and the challenge is that a large portion of modernization projects fail (around 70%).

The main reasons are the loss of institutional knowledge, the difficulty of untangling 20–30-year-old code that few understand, and, most importantly, ensuring the new system is a true 1:1 functional replica of the original via testing.

Modernization is an incredibly expensive process involving numerous SMEs, moving parts, and massive budgets. Leveraging AI creates an opportunity to make this process far more efficient and successful overall.

Curious why the COBOL devs were laid off if they're in the middle of a modernization or some sort of replacement project?