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Wednesday, April 07, 2004

Was the Mainframe ever cool!

Was the Mainframe ever cool?

The Mainframe turned 40 today. There was a time when they were really the thing, absolute Mission Control but with the lights dimmed. A secret society of utmost importance and beyond the comprehension of most everyone, and it had everything to do with the IBM360 and huge, thick manuals, and the secret goings on in those Mission Control rooms.

Except for a visit, I was never on the inside, but instead toiled out at some dumb terminal in a remote location, dealing with primitive software and very slow batch processing ("Your job is number 217 in queue"). Then some manager comes by looking for a smart kid who can do something with this new tool called an IBM PC, someone who can figure out how to justify the purchase. The kid's eyes light up, around the world, and that was that, give or take 20 years of PC/server progress.

April is the cruelest month, dear 360. Where shall I bury the one punched card fallen out of an old Fortran book, with its magic incantation "WHILE (COUNT .LE. 40) DO"?

For humans 40 and over, T.S. Elliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock reads quite well:


I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,

And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,

And in short, I was afraid.


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