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IBM

IBM Will Feed Four Children For a Day For Every Student Who Masters the Mainframe (ibm.com) 151

Posted by EditorDavid from the we-are-the-world dept.
This week brings a special event honoring the IBM Z line of mainframes, writes long-time Slashdot reader theodp: As part of this week's IBM Z Day event, looking-for-young-blood IBM is teaming up with tech-backed K-12 CS nonprofits Code.org and CSforALL and calling on students 14-and-up to Master The Mainframe during the 24-hour code-a-thon to open doors to new opportunities with Fortune 500 companies.

"The rewards for participants are substantial," explains Big Blue. "For every student who finishes Level 1, IBM will donate to the UN World Food Programme #ShareTheMeal... In celebration of IBM Z day, we will double the donation for all students that complete Master the Mainframe Level 1 between Sept 15 — 30 2020. Just 1 hour of your time will feed 4 children for a day." "Through three interactive Levels, you will access a mainframe and get skilled up on the foundations of Mainframe," according to IBM's announcement at MasterTheMainframe.com, "including JCL, Ansible, Python, Unix, COBOL, REXX, all through VS Code. Round it all out with a grand challenge where you craft your own fully-equipped Mainframe creation."

"One mainframe is equivalent to 1,500 x86 servers," the site notes. It also points out that mainframes handle 30 billion transactions every day, "more than the number of Google searches every day" — including 87% of all credit card transactions, nearly $8 trillion payments a year.
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IBM Will Feed Four Children For a Day For Every Student Who Masters the Mainframe More

IBM Will Feed Four Children For a Day For Every Student Who Masters the Mainframe

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  • So sad that JCL will probably make them run away (Score:5, Interesting)

    by cruff ( 171569 ) on Monday September 14, 2020 @07:44AM (#60504062)
    I've never seen anything so strangely designed as JCL in my experience. That and one Z series server is certainly not the equivalent of 1500 x86 based servers.
    • "That and one Z series server is certainly not the equivalent of 1500 x86 based servers." ...in price maybe!!
      • I guess it really depends on what kind of x86 based servers your talking about. A 386DX/40 based server is technically running x86 instructions. Bolt 1500 of those together and, yeah, its no longer a lie, but it is a bit deceptive. But none of that really matters when the majority of all your code is designed for batch rather than real-time processing loads.

        • The last type of Intel chip you could reasonably call x86 was Core (P6-derived). By Core 2 Intel was using the amd64 ISA. The last AMD chip you could reasonably call x86 was Athlon XP (K7). A mainframe is certainly not as powerful in any sense as 1500 Core 1s, or 1500 Athlon XPs. It might use less electricity, though... Might ;)

          • When referring to processor architectures, x86 is the industry standard term.

            Regarding the mainframe: The power is not necessarily due to individual cores, it's really due to the low level design and hardware (cpu plus supporting chips) that supports multiple parallel processing cores/processors/drawers of processors/etc. In addition, there is a large focus on io because for transaction processing workloads io tends to be the bottleneck (that's why IBM puts in much larger but slower caches on their chips

            • "When referring to processor architectures, x86 is the industry standard term."

              Yes, for 32 bit x86-compatible architectures. For amd64 one usually writes x86-64.

              "Regarding the mainframe: The power is not necessarily due to individual cores, it's really due to the low level design and hardware"

              And still gets its ass handed to it by clusters for most workloads.

      • The zEnterprise EC12 runs 101 cores, according to a skim of the wikipedia page. Their calculations make sense if you assume they are running a ton of virtual servers, which is one of the most common uses for a zSeries - when you're running that many processors you can be quite accommodating in over-provisioning. 15:1 is a bit optimistic, but depending upon workload may be achievable.

        They are not saying it has the processing power of 1500 servers, but that it can potentially replace 1500s servers while havin

    • The only excuse for JCL is that it comes directly from the days of card readers.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by whitroth ( 9367 )

      Chuckle. Chuckle. Chuckle.

      Around 2000, using IBM's VM (they've had virtual machines since the 1970s), someone maxed out a mainframe.

      With 48,000 instances of Linux.

      The same mainframe ran quite happily with "only" 32,000 VMs. And one mainframe to handle that uses less power and takes up less space than how many servers?

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by cruff ( 171569 )

        With 48,000 instances of Linux.

        And just how much useful work was being performed by said 48,000 instances of Linux?

  • Why only four? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by OpinOnion ( 4473025 ) on Monday September 14, 2020 @07:52AM (#60504068)
    Are they trying to bargain shop with their vertically integrated charity? Is 4 the best possible tax to profit strategy? Feeding 4 kids for one day doesn't necessarily cost much at all. If you told me you'd feed four kids for a DAY if I did months worth of work, I'd think you were an asshole. Feed 4 kids for a year and I'll be impressed or like 1000 kids for a day. How many total people to they expect to take the offer anyway? It can't be that many that they go broke at 4 kids per day. That's gotta be way on the low end of what IBM can comfortably afford in an effort to get PR, to inspired students and to get tax breaks from charity.

    • Re: Why only four? (Score:5, Funny)

      by e3m4n ( 947977 ) on Monday September 14, 2020 @08:03AM (#60504076)

      Ive never seen such a pathetic attempt To remain relevant since the sun set on the horse-drawn buggy industry. I think I would rather crawl naked through broken glass than deal with another fossil language like cobol with their hateful all-caps and nit-picky ass formatting.

      • Re: Why only four? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Stonent1 ( 594886 ) <stonentNO@SPAMstonent.pointclark.net> on Monday September 14, 2020 @08:12AM (#60504096) Journal
        Banks pay good money for COBOL programmers and mainframe people. Wells Fargo tried to get off the mainframe by converting to a Java based platform, it cost them $50 million and they ended up abandoning the project in the end.

        • Java? Because there is a problem with C/C++? I mean it only runs the stock exchange. Nothing too serious ;-)

        • Developers are the only professionals I know who would turn down a shit load of money because they were unwilling to deal with minor inconveniences in their life like "picky ass formatting". There are people willing to work in dangerous jobs around the world where shit really does suck for that kind of money. Yet developers, who would still be sitting at a desk in an air conditioned office can't deal with a language in all caps.

          It's amazing. You'd think a six figure salary right out of college would be more

          • Re: Why only four? (Score:4, Insightful)

            by Nite_Hawk ( 1304 ) on Monday September 14, 2020 @10:22AM (#60504430) Homepage

            Every career has irritating things that experts don't want to deal with. If you want someone who knows what they are doing, expect to spend a boatload of money for them to take it on as a nuisance fee. It's the same way in construction, accounting, adult films, you name it. If it were easy/convenient the market would be flooded with cobol developers and it wouldn't command the high salary that it does.

            • The market does pay what its worth. A 21 year old straight out of their CS program can make $150k a year and that's without moving to silicon valley and pissing it all away on rent.

      • COBOL doesn't require all caps. Hasn't since 1985. Nor does it have nit-picky format requirements.

        YAAFM.
      • We have ascertained that it is good for kids to learn programming in school. Now we are going to dictate what programming they learn? With Mainframe experience you are more likely to get a domestic job competing with other domestic workers as far as I have seen. Learning the wizbang language of the day means a big city center and competing with H1B. Besides, it's all applicable somehow anyway. Logic is logic.

    • Re:Why only four? (Score:5, Funny)

      by xonen ( 774419 ) on Monday September 14, 2020 @08:15AM (#60504106) Journal

      Just read carefully and keep them to their word:

      For every student who finishes Level 1, we will double the donation to #sharethemeal

      So if we start with 1 meal, if a mere hundred students finish it they'll donate 2^100 meals. That's over a quintillion meals. Well done, IBM.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward

        The government gave out $1300 checks that were supposed to last 3 months.

        So...

        "For just $6 a day you can sponsor an American and keep them from starving."

        • Only $6! That wouldn't even buy a single slice of avocado toast, how could anyone survive on only $6 a day, the horror of it!

        • The McDonald's dollar menu could probably get your daily calories for $6. It's not the healthiest and you'd want a multivitamin to supplement what you aren't getting, but getting people enough to eat isn't a problem. I wouldn't be surprised if it were true that obesity was more prevalent among the poor.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by imidan ( 559239 )
      I heard on TV that I can feed a starving child for 11 cents per day, if that helps your math at all.

    • The question isn't why only four... the question is why are they playing games with feeding children at all. If they have the money and resources to help feed some children, then fucking help feed some children. Do that as much as you can afford and when you can afford it. Don't play a game with it... for everyone that jumps through this hoop we'll feel a starving kid. As if we're not doing our part to feed kids if we don't jump through their hoops.

    • I mean how many out of work recent grads will need to use this to feed their families. Because they are trying to apply for a job with Mainframe experience.

      I have been in this game for decades, I have worked on mainframes... However they are a dying technology. Especially as the business requirements for most software haven't changed that much. As most Business apps are CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) in which today A single Low End $3000 server (With all its reduncies, and "Enterprise Features" is

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by theodp ( 442580 )

      ShareTheMeal [sharethemeal.org]: "Feed a child for a day with US$ 0.80"

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by pjt33 ( 739471 )

        Why not give them something nutritious? Humans can't digest nickels and dimes.

      • So for one hour of a student's time IBM will donate $2.40. Wow, how generous of them.

        Let's be charitable and assume 2000 students in the entire country sign up for this (which IMO is a huge overestimate). That's $4,800. A rounding error to IBM's budget.

        This almost seems designed to generate bad publicity for IBM. They are donating (literally a pittance) to hungry children predicated on school kids spending time learning their IBM's largely obsolete technologies.

        • > 2000 students in the entire country sign up for this

          How's OLPC doing?

          Maybe the kids who need the food can learn JCL and z/OS and IBM can crow about how they pay them 80c an hour. Then, at least, IBM would have an audience without many better job prospects, which is what they really need.

          I am not sure anybody thought this one through.

    • from the summary:

      Just 1 hour of your time will feed 4 children for a day.

      1 hour, not 1 month.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tchdab1 ( 164848 )

      Exactly.
      OTOH we could tax wealthy income fairly and feed all the kids all the time. But that would be "[enter your disparaging political label here]".

  • 1500 x86? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 14, 2020 @07:56AM (#60504072)

    One mainframe is equivalent to 1,500 x86 servers

    maybe for certain low end x86 servers compared to high end mainframes that might be true. Last mainframe replacement I worked on we replaced it with 4x DL580's and that was massive overkill that gave them significantly more performance.

    • Re:1500 x86? (Score:4, Informative)

      by bws111 ( 1216812 ) on Monday September 14, 2020 @08:40AM (#60504176)

      Even if true (doubtful) that is a completely useless statement. WHAT mainframe did you replace with DL580s? The smallest current generation mainframe has a Processor Capacity Index of 98. Yeah, you could probably replace that with DL580s (if you want to give up all the security and availability). The largest current mainframe has a PCI of 183,267 (>1800 times faster), with 40TB usable memory (there is actually more memory than that because it is RAIM), and an I/O bandwidth of 1152GB/sec. No way you are replacing that with '4x DL580s'.

      • By the sounds of it, he replaced a PDP11 with 4 PCs, which is probably about right...

    • Scale (Score:2)

      by JBMcB ( 73720 )

      I'm guessing the mainframe you were replacing was 10+ years old. Mainframe transaction speeds are usually through the roof compared to x86 architectures, as they are designed from the ground up for it. As a counter-example, an acquaintance's company replaced their mainframe-based ERP system with an x86 solution. Even though the mainframe was pushing 15 years old, the new solution didn't scale properly, and required twice as many servers as initially estimated by the ERP vendor. In the end they spent more mo

    • Kids don't see what the big deal of mainframes are. After all, they can fit all of google into a smart phone.

  • It seems the only good thing (Score:3)

    by bobstreo ( 1320787 ) on Monday September 14, 2020 @08:08AM (#60504086)

    is they are not being forced to learn COBOL to create future support for the language.

    The bad news is they will probably be forced to return to work for free (umm i mean learn things) to provide free water to other people.

  • Good idea but too late for the US/Europe I think (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ErichTheRed ( 39327 ) on Monday September 14, 2020 @08:29AM (#60504136)

    There are some industries that legitimately need the mainframe computing model (airlines and banks are the most cited examples, but others exist too.) Companies still pay good money for systems programmers and such, and it's undeniable that retirements are causing a talent shortage. However, I think the chance to make fairly decent money in a niche where you're not a dime a dozen is lost on today's CS grads. Anyone graduating now has been told that every app is a web app, and the only language that matters is JavaScript. It doesn't help that basically everything from the mainframe era can't really be presented in new hot sexy AI ML blockchain serverless functions terms.

    The other issue is that this is IBM we're talking about. Even the most naive student knows that they've spent the last decades selling off almost everything technical, and sending the rest to India. If I were a student, I'd be thinking, "Sure, I'll master the mainframe, then the company employing me will get sold the offshoring package and I'll be left with a bunch of skills I can't sell anywhere." Companies hate that they have to pay a premium for mainframe people and I guarantee IBM has a nice convenient sign-here-and-all-your-problems-will-disappear "service engagement."

    It's a tough spot. Some workloads just aren't suited to a different platform or non-batch processing, and it's not just lazy business processes. I've seen many "mainframe replacement" or "strangle the mainframe with web services" projects that only get partway there or fail because there's so much tied up in the whole ecosystem.

    • It isn't so much that they NEED the mainframe model, it is they are stuck with it due to conversion costs. plenty of banks and airlines have moved away from mainframes, the cost of a mainframe buys an awful lot of high performance compute and storage in the X86 world nowadays.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by bws111 ( 1216812 )

        Banks and airlines have moved away from traditional mainframe workload (z/OS, COBOL) to Linux and Java based workload. Much of that new workload is running on mainframes, not because of 'conversion costs', but because of value.

      • This is true ^^^^^

        I worked for a company that had both. It was a financial institution. The mainframe was seen as a major cost, a major liability, and a constant source of pain in getting new recruits. The only reason it stuck was that it was risky and cost prohibitive to move everything to x86 platforms and modern languages. No company who expects to compete in the next 30 years should be entrenching themselves in an IBM captivated mainframe environment.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by dwywit ( 1109409 )

          "The only reason it stuck was that it was risky and cost prohibitive to move everything to x86 platforms"

          In other words, it was more cost-effective and reliable to stick with the MF?

          • Actually, no it was not more cost-effective and reliable. Certain areas of the company switched over, but some transitions were near impossible. I could tell you about serious company losses incurred by mainframe issues, but I would be betraying confidence of a former employer. I know for a fact that the mainframe process flows consumed far more support hours than systems that were converted over to more modern languages. It may be hard for someone on the outside to understand (and would require significant

    • I would like to mod this up re. jobs being shipped to India. Companies take their legacy conversion to a firm to manage the conversion. This migration opportunity will never be given to US workers.

      On the flip side, the more someone works with the COBOL and associated skill set, the less marketable they become elsewhere.

      Had IBM made this technology available to learn and practice on, it might have helped. For example, rent time on a system Z platform using BlueMix. Don't laugh, I'm sure someone uses them. Ma

  • Business must be crappy for IBM.

  • Put another way (Score:5, Funny)

    by DrXym ( 126579 ) on Monday September 14, 2020 @08:36AM (#60504158)
    Learn our shitty 1970s bizzaro environment or some kids will starve.

    • Learn our shitty 1970s bizzaro environment or some kids will starve.

      Nailed it. If I was a 14yo with this opportunity, I'd be pumped. But by the time they graduate college it will be like, "can you believe how big those things used to be?" while holding an IBM Z on their tongue.

  • Your children will be placed in the custody of Carl's Jr.

  • Easy! Wait... (Score:3)

    by AndyKron ( 937105 ) on Monday September 14, 2020 @08:53AM (#60504212)
    You can be good at something in 20 hours so the kids have 4 hours to burn
  • are not just toys or pixels. If they want to feed them they should it eitherway. They are not just some random achievement targets. "if you learn my programming language i will donate to charity and save some people from starving". really douchebag? don't they have someone who could fire the person who thought of this ?

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by theodp ( 442580 )

      Good cause, no doubt, but promo's a tad reminiscent of Cheeseface [wikipedia.org]: Cheeseface was a dog who featured on the famous "Death" Issue of the National Lampoon magazine, released January 1973. The cover, photographed by Ronald G. Harris, showed a dog with a gun pointed to his head, and the caption "If You Don't Buy This Magazine, We'll Kill This Dog"

  • I guess some Indians may be attracted, but no right thinking European would consider this dinosaur company to be a good place to work
  • This made me remember the old days. Having to boot up the machine with dip switches and binary code. Using punched cards, paper and magnetic tape. Ram was visible with a magnifying glass. You HAD to know how the OS and your programming language worked. You HAD to know how the hardware worked for that matter. Not on the engineering level, but enough.

    Programming back then was so down to ....metal. And being "just a programmer" was an esteemed position.

    These days with programmers insisting that they be calle

  • So IBM is finally starting to call "the cloud" by its real name.

    • Except the cloud is on clusters of PCs, and really not on anything else.

      Mainframes are not cloud computing at all, although timesharing gets close-ish.

  • Hey IBM, how about you just feed those children without any strings attached?

    • Yep, and I just tried to sign up and I've never seen anything that tries to steal so much personal data in so little time.

      They want all the usual stuff plus photos, facebook, linkedin, twitter... the lot, and the user agreement says they're allowed to sell all of it to third parties.

      They can only feed 4 kids for all that info?

      (barf)

    • It's one step away from 'if you do such and so we will not torture these children'

  • ... but please upgrade these obscure programming languages. Build a cross-compiler for modern languages and then we'll talk business. I'm not betting my entire career on cobol unless you're paying me 85k euros a year to get started and you're an organization that I can trust to be around when I retire.

  • Anyone else read that "IBM will feed 4 children a day to the Masters of the Mainframe?". Better call Qanon.
  • You do what IBM wants or some random children get starved... and somehow this seems normal to enough people that it gets a press release

  • What the article doesn't say is that IBM will BEAT four children for everyone who drops out of the program.

  • Charity is a way for the wealthy to launder their crimes which directly cause poverty.

  • I remember the day our mainframe went down at a large company I was at. Absolutely worst disaster ever. And IBM had to manually send someone to "unlock" features of the mainframe to even attempt to recover. Oh, and JCL is not something that is friendly to use in a modern computing environment.

    The most successful areas of our company had run away from mainframe as fast as they could. The most problematic areas clung to the mainframe like it was the last lifeboat off the Titanic. IBM is good at creating a c

    • I've worked with mainframes a lot and I have to say I have never seen one go down on its own. It's always human error.

  • BS (Score:2)

    by Shaitan ( 22585 )

    Step it up and do something that matters. Don't make it four children for an hour, make it 1 child in perpetuity.

  • Just actually feeding the children and not tying it to some dumb PR move.
  • The person who wrote the text of this promo probably makes more money than is needed to feed 4 kids for a day. IBM has so much revenue that they can feed thousands of children for many years. The culture that produced this 'contest' is sick. They don't care an iota about the hungry kids, they just care about using hungry children as an emotional bargaining chip to get people into their 'contest'. 'Remember, if you don't win, 4 children will go hungry for a day!'. And way to go teaching young people that the

  • Every now and then there's a comment section worth reading on this site and this is one of them. Party like it's 1999

  • Leartn COBOL and JCL OR WE STARVE THE CHILDREN!

    -Sincerely, Big Blue

  • IBMâ(TM)s mainframe business model is sustained by encouraging organisations to run outdated legacy code instead of upgrading Their systems to modern platforms. There is NOTHING exceptional about the mainframe architecture except that it allows organisations to avoid redevelopment and to instead continue to run their old code at great expense. Heck, back in the early 1990s a buddy of mine who at the time just graduated with an Engineering degree from university had a job offer from IBM Canada to joi

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bws111 ( 1216812 )

      Yeah, that must be why the majority of mainframe workload is now on Linux. Must also be why IBM is encouraging the learning of Python, Ansible, and Unix through this program.

      Where do people come up with this crap?

  • That's what they're teaching.
  • The master mainframe? Horrifying.

    The preceding comment is best understood when read aloud in your best Alex Jones voice.
  • I really don't get this: why aren't they porting all this antique code in antique programming languages to at least C? Hell, from what I've heard you could port it all to Visual Basic and it'd still be an improvement.
    Also in the age of multicore processors and gigahertz clock speeds why are traditional mainframe computers even a Thing anymore?
    Why can't they port all this old code to newer languages running on newer computers, get it all working in parallel, then just switch over and scrap the old mainfram

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by bws111 ( 1216812 )

      You, like many other 'experts' on here, obviously have no idea what a mainframe is or what it does.

      First, as why 'they' aren't porting their code to C. Why would you port highly stable, highly performant, code from a 60 year old language (COBOL) to a 50 year old language (C)? What are you going to gain from this risky undertaking? I don't know who told you you VB would be an improvement, but whoever it was is an idiot.

      Next, for the laughable 'multicore processors and gigahertz clock speeds'. How many c

  • - Eat your COBOL!!
    - I don't wanna.. It's old, looks bad and smells funny..
    - Eat it! The kids in Africa are starving!

  • "Insane... in the mainframe..." or something like that.

  • So if you fail to pass the level IBM will withhold food from a child? Charitable giving should perhaps not be tied to student actions.
  • Anybody graduating and actively thinking about working on mainframes, without a six figure salary, should have their head examined. The same goes for anybody in the West that starts working at IBM in the hope that they will have a long-term job!

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