This great article emphases what I’ve believed for some time now; the mainframe (and midframe) systems are rock solid not as much because of their elegance but because they are so resilient and almost bullet proof. I have always emphasized durability over fragile development approaches. Make it work first, make it solid and resilient then make it beautiful.
The reality in most cases is the backend is never seen and elegance is secondary. Third normal form?? Beautifully formatted & nested code (tabs vs spaces)?? In the end, it’s completely meaningless if it’s fragile and slow. If you haven’t heard the stories about the old AS400 systems give it a google. You’ll find some great stories about these systems living in a closet for years where no one has touched it and might not even know where it is but it was still running!
Great article by Steve Moore.
chuckezell.com 