This week we’re talking about mainframes with Cameron Seay, Adjunct Professor at East Carolina University and a member of the Governing Board of the Open Mainframe Project. If you’ve been curious about mainframes, this show will be a great guide.

Cameron explains exactly what a mainframe is and how it’s different from the cloud. We talk COBOL and the state of education and opportunities around that language. We cover the state-of-the-art in mainframe land, System Z, Linux on mainframes, and more.

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Featuring:

• Cameron Seay – Twitter, LinkedIn
• Adam Stacoviak – Mastodon, Twitter, GitHub, LinkedIn, Website
• Jerod Santo – Mastodon, Twitter, GitHub, LinkedIn

Show Notes:

• Open Mainframe Project
• IBM zSystems

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Timestamps:

(00:00) - This week on The Changelog(01:16) - Sponsor: Sentry(01:56) - Start the show!(04:40) - What is a Mainframe?(08:39) - What exactly is an IBM Z Mainframe?(12:16) - What hardware makes up a Mainframe?(15:50) - How is Mainframe different than HPC?(22:58) - Sponsor: Postman(24:13) - Should devs learn COBOL?(27:43) - What's the interface to use a Mainframe?(31:52) - Will IBM always own the Mainframe?(34:19) - What flavors of Linux run on Mainframe?(36:15) - The Open Mainframe Project(37:56) - COBOL misconceptions(40:11) - Demand for COBOL devs(42:46) - How do you attract devs to this world?(53:24) - What the path to get in?(58:35) - The BIG opportunity(1:02:25) - Thank you Cindy Harris!(1:03:04) - Outro