When I grew up, my mom was working on an AS/400 at work. I spent many hours watching her fly through all the screens.<p>She knew exactly the right combo of Function keys followed by how many TAB she needed to start typing. She could do it without looking at the screen or the keyboard, just the sheet she had to enter/modify in the system.<p>It was incredibly fast, 99% of the time.<p>She hated the move to Windows. All the sudden, everything was slow, error prone, fiddly. Keyboard navigation was mostly gone and although employees could start working with less training, she knew the move was generally a big step backwards.<p>She despised computers with passion from that day on. Today she's retired and uses an iPad only.<p>I'm a UX designer/developer. There is something to be said for these old terminal systems, when it comes to repetitive daily tasks.
You'd be surprised to think that the IBM AS/400 still keeps the lights on for a number of large business.<p>Working in professional services a number of our clients still use AS/400 mainframe environments, with data migrations to other environments becoming more and more common.<p>I worked on a data migration from an AS/400 environment to an SQL DB. I kid you not, the database schema for the AS/400 environment was printed on old A3 scrolls that looked tea stained.
> If you’ve never seen an IBM AS/400 machine, don’t feel bad. Most people haven’t. Introduced in 1988 as a mid-range server line, it used a unique object-based operating system and was geared specifically towards business and enterprise customers. Unless you’re a particularly big fan of COBOL you probably won’t have much use for one today, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t worth playing around with if the opportunity presents itself<p>Oh boy, I've seen multiple businesses that utilize AS/400 system(s). I even know a few people who manage them, building out applications, etc... They are still very much used.<p>You'd also be surprised how many records about you still exist in said system(s). Hell, I was using an AS/400 system only 3 years ago for business purposes (I'm not a COBOL developer, but something had to be fixed).
Considering we are buying a new iSeries with the Power 9 this year, I expect to have an AS/400 descendent in our server room for another 10 years. The last one lasted 13 years.
AS/400 is the neatest computer system architecturally that I think has ever been made.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_System_i" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_System_i</a>
Nice to see AS/400 turning up on here.<p>When I started my first proper "IT" job, back in the late 90s for a big multinational, they were running their payroll system off it. The main node was about a decade old at the time.<p>The input system for it was a 16 bit VB4 desktop app that wrote text files to a netware share that this picked up.<p>I am always impressed at how these bits of old tech, sticky tape and string were so unbelievably reliable and scalable across thousands of users. I actually actively miss working on this sort of stuff.
We're running our ERP on an AS/400. That is nowhere near to die in the foreseeable future.<p>I was actually trying to learn RPG mentioned in the article last week, a blast from the past!
ha! I used to look after an AS/400 running the company ERP (JD Edwards).<p>Pretty solid box. never ever <i>ever</i> crashed or got slow or anything.
just a mind fuck to do anything with.
Ran the Hercules emulator with a z/OS image last year. It was a fun project and the UI is super-fast.<p>Currently working on another mainframe os but wish that I can some day find a place with an i-series or z-box (IBM mainframes).<p>Only in my 20s, but these systems will be around until I retire. The hardware might change, but the cost of educating developers in RPG, COBOL, control languages etc must be far lower than translating the code.
I used DB2 hosted on AS/400 at my previous job 4 years ago. I'm sure it is still in use. (the application is quite important for that company)
Heh. I work with AS400, and BlueZone Mainframe Display, every day at work for nearly 13 years now. Hundreds of us do, we do the bulk of our work in it actually.