Ask HN: Would you take a job programming VMS?

I’m an older programmer but I spent my career staying up to date. I’ve managed that for 36 years give or take. Now with AI doing a lot of my current job I can see that there’s a definite end point where the combo of competing with younger programmers for a shrinking pool of work is going to get tough.

However there seem to be a few niches where I could be productive until I’m ready to retire and there might be an opportunity to join a team working on a system they’re trying to get off of. My quick evaluation is that there’s 3 or 4 solid years doing that in a backwater where AI is going to struggle.

In this situation would you do it? I frankly don’t care about being on top of tech any more but I’m keen to use my years of experience being productive.

6 points | by smackeyacky 3 hours ago

4 comments

  • late_night_fix 4 minutes ago
    This is exactly the kind of work where decades of experience still matters.Modern stacks reward speed,but legacy systems reward judgment and cautions.Not exciting but often valueable.
  • codingdave 27 minutes ago
    I am doing it. Not VMS, but a different niche legacy platform. The jobs are few and far between, but so are the people who can do them. In particular, people who can work on both legacy platforms and the modern stacks are quite rare, and AI's presence means there aren't any more of us showing up in the world.
    [-]
    • smackeyacky 11 minutes ago
      Ok that is an encouraging take thankyou
  • mikewarot 2 hours ago
    The nice thing about the DEC VAX/VMS system is that there is good help online, and enough good documentation to fill a library.

    I run an 11/780 emulated system on my phone on days I feel nostalgic.

    [-]
  • sgbeal 2 hours ago
    > I frankly don’t care about being on top of tech any more but I’m keen to use my years of experience being productive.

    Preach it, brother! :-D

    > In this situation would you do it?

    FWIW, if it would keep me productive and keep a roof over my head, i'd not at all be averse to working on VMS or a similarly obscure system, provided they didn't require me to know anything about it going in (which would rule me out).

    At some point in our lives we have to accept practicality over bling. Let the young'uns fight out the LLM Wars, then walk in (if necessary) once that dust has settled.

    [-]
    • smackeyacky 12 minutes ago
      This is where my head is at right now. I don’t feel quite so crazy now.