Last of the Big Iron Gone In the House

After many years, man-hours of programming and operation, and watts of electricity used, the House of Representatives has decommissioned the last of the mainframe computers that kept track of things for the 400+ Representatives and their work.

Slashdot has the story -

“The US House of Representatives has taken its last mainframe offline, signaling the end of an era in Washington, DC computing. The last mainframe supposedly enjoyed ‘quasi-celebrity status’ within the House data center, having spent 12 years keeping the House’s inventory control records and financial management data, among other tasks. But it was time for a change, with the House spending $30,000 a year to power the mainframe and another $700,000 each year for maintenance and support.”

Another small blow to IBM, as the dinosaurs of the last century continue to come down. It is amazing how many mainframe computers are still running, and how much they are relied upon (if you’re looking for statistics I’m not disposed at this time to put up some things to amaze, but, you would be amazed, unless you work in the mainframe sector).

One factoid I do know – if you were to enter the job market today, you could earn a very good living if you really knew COBOL and JCL, two languages that no one studies anymore, but are still used in a big way, on at least 5 of the seven continents. Chances are, you could work more than half of your career with that knowledge, as millions of lines of COBOL are simply ported to PCs, because there is no need to move them to C++ or any other language.

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Big Iron – still in use in many places

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