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Did you? That system was already working and it sounds like it just needed a couple of decent Devs. I'm sure the hardware is not cheap, but surely it's cheaper than a full Java rewrite with new hardware?

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Mainframe hardware is crazy expensive. There was an old saying from an ex-IBM'er that each one came with a free engineer. Because that's how much they cost.

A former employer had mainframes that weren't permitted to run at full capacity without paying even more. They were so entrenched they paid IBM thousands of dollars whenever they exceeded their allotment.

At one time IBM (and probably other manufacturers) installed RAM and hard drive capacity, but didn't enable it. If you wanted more capacity, they sent out an engineer to basically "flip a switch" (more or less). You always had that ability, but not until they enabled it.

We kinda see something similar today with Tesla - and we'll probably see more of it in the future.

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