Is mainframe programming a good career? Will it wither away in the ever changing computing world?or will stay?

Actually mainframes are coming back after being downsized (no pun). The older room size mainframe is gone, however the more and more big firms are returning to the mainframe theory, better sucrity, central location, custom software. Check out the last item from IBM web page,, CNN recently did a write up on the mainframe. It is now a smaller supercomputer.

Trick is in the older days there where a half dozen languages on mainframes, some very privately written code. Most airlines wrote their own code. So what mainframe language do you want to learn? Go to IBM.com, or Unisys.com and read up. Or just type in mainframes in google.

There will be an expanding market in progrmming for mainframes, however how large will the market be??

Two things to learn before worring about a course in mainframes, learn C++ and learn Unix / linux as they both will help you to jump onto another programming language.

p.s the room behind me used to have bus and tag cables with a halon system in the roof, now it runs hundreds of servers. I bet in the near future mini's (AS400) types will be in there.

Carl

Mainframe? That technology has been obsolete for 20 years!

you should learn emerging technologies instead.