This is, in some way, endemic to all branches of software. Every group of practitioners has a shared vocabulary - as the article says, it's exploiting an efficiency. If we all have a common language, we can speak more efficiently about what we're doing, and what needs to be done.
That said, how approachable that vocabulary is reflects how approachable the community around it is.
For instance, I've found the DevOps community to be very open and accessible to newcomers. There is shared language - orchestration, config management, even some acronyms like CI/CD - but they generally seem to use approachable language. I've also found the Python and Ruby communities to be very welcoming and willing to teach newcomers, and while I'm not involved in it, I've heard the Rust community really shines here.
On the other hand, one of the reasons I've stayed away from the security community is its propensity for acronyms. SIEMs, CSPMs, ASPMs, SASTs, DASTs, EDR tools, and maybe you've even got a CISSP cert.. It's not approachable, and I've found that many security practitioners wear knowledge of these acronyms as a badge of honor. I've found the networking community even more toxic: there are some pieces of software I've used for over 20 years, with forums I avoid like the plague, because many questions are answered with some variety of "Read the docs!" or "You don't KNOW?!?!"
If I were a benevolent-dictator-for-life and had to bootstrap a community, I'd be aiming to foster the former, not the latter.
classichasclass [3 hidden]5 mins ago
This is more a primer to IBM vocabulary, though. IBM midrange systems also "IPL," like the POWER6 in the next room which isn't a small system but definitely not a mainframe.
GianFabien [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Granted jargon can be jarring to outsiders. But the cultural problem is that smart, clever younger folks would rather talk in acronyms like AI, ML GPT, exits, cap table, vesting, etc.
Talk to anyone under 40 and they will tell you that mainframes are extinct, that Java is sooo old, COBOL: what's that? They could rewrite those dinosaur systems in a weekend's hackathon.
Spooky23 [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Mainframes are awesome, but they’ve achieved what the hyper scalers aspire to - complete market domination. They finished up in 1991 or so.
The problem is there’s no growth. There are no new customers, no new patterns or meaningful growth areas. It’s a career cul de sac, and when the bean counters at your big bank discover Oracle Cloud ROI is 6% more than you, you get nuked from orbit.
HN.zip
That said, how approachable that vocabulary is reflects how approachable the community around it is.
For instance, I've found the DevOps community to be very open and accessible to newcomers. There is shared language - orchestration, config management, even some acronyms like CI/CD - but they generally seem to use approachable language. I've also found the Python and Ruby communities to be very welcoming and willing to teach newcomers, and while I'm not involved in it, I've heard the Rust community really shines here.
On the other hand, one of the reasons I've stayed away from the security community is its propensity for acronyms. SIEMs, CSPMs, ASPMs, SASTs, DASTs, EDR tools, and maybe you've even got a CISSP cert.. It's not approachable, and I've found that many security practitioners wear knowledge of these acronyms as a badge of honor. I've found the networking community even more toxic: there are some pieces of software I've used for over 20 years, with forums I avoid like the plague, because many questions are answered with some variety of "Read the docs!" or "You don't KNOW?!?!"
If I were a benevolent-dictator-for-life and had to bootstrap a community, I'd be aiming to foster the former, not the latter.
Talk to anyone under 40 and they will tell you that mainframes are extinct, that Java is sooo old, COBOL: what's that? They could rewrite those dinosaur systems in a weekend's hackathon.
The problem is there’s no growth. There are no new customers, no new patterns or meaningful growth areas. It’s a career cul de sac, and when the bean counters at your big bank discover Oracle Cloud ROI is 6% more than you, you get nuked from orbit.