Answers inline. > On 6 Jan 2022, at 04:54, David Crayford <dcrayf...@gmail.com>levelled. If > young employees don’t want to work on 3270 tube images or JCL, maybe we > should stop hiring prima donna’s but instead disadvantaged people who want to > work and learn something. > > It's insulting to call young people prima donna's just because they don't > want to use 3270 or JCL. Are we pima donna's because we didn't want to use > paper tape and typewriters to write code? Technology moves on and the > mainframe has to keep up. And I'm happy that IBM are doing a brilliant job of > doing that. > > I used all of those including punch cards. It was needed at the time. You did not parse the sentence right, it started with if, and young is just an adverb. I know some old men here that categorically refuse to logon to z/VM - they also are prima donna’s. So don’t make it look like I said anything about young people. I know a lot of young people who work on 3270 and don’t complain.
>> Tragically, the true value of the mainframe, which is realized in all those >> products you call old, is not realized in those ‘modern’ programming >> paradigms - remember the first TCP implementation for MVS ? - it ran like a >> dog and chewed up whole lpars while VTAM still did the work. This was of >> course because it was a straight port of the code for some other >> architecture. > > Have to disagree with you there Rene. I work with the guy who was the > architect for OMVS back then and TCP was implemented in Pascal with a crap > compiler. It's a topic of nostalgic jokes on our internal slack channels. > > If you have seen the code then you must know that it did not really utilize the channel architecture. We are talking pre-omvs. OMVS needed TCP and not the other way around. The second Pascal version was a lot better because it understood architecture. >> Moving to other tools while they are not ripe for the environment would be >> irrational. I don’t know what happened to the budget for Swift on z/OS but I >> hope you see what I mean. A port of Python that is not ready will accomplish >> the same thing. Your prima donna’s will complain that library X, Y or Z is >> still not available on the mainframe and pressure their management to go off >> it - I see that happen every day, while fighting performance myths and >> disasters caused by ‘modern’. It is undeniable that git - which I love and >> use every day, is much more complicated on z/OS because of EBCDIC, access >> methods, records and block sizes. This is the reality and we should not deny >> it to please people who learned to allocate a file with ‘touch test.txt’. >> They will get stuck without that knowledge and hate their work even more. > > A Swift port wasn't expensive. IBM had already ported LLVM to z/OS using a > ported front end and their TOBY back-end so it was just a matter of interop. > Same with golang etc, etc. Now there is a real z/OS port open source port of > LLVM the possibilities are endless. Why not be positive about the future? > Another suggestive statement. I can argue with you about facts, without accusations and suggestions. Can you? I worked with the Swift compiler, to sort out some things for a colleague. I liked it and am disappointed IBM now decided, over Medium, to push Python, which I find decidedly mèh and not innovative at all compared to Swift. While knocking Rexx without any valid content. Because it is old? Exec and Clist are old, and I don’t need to say anything bad about it, they just are available and keep running. > >> >> We all have different tastes and that is one thing, another thing is when >> that taste is driven by commercial interests. And still another when those >> interests are going against the best interest of the platform. > > The best interests of the platform is maintain the system of record and the > legacy and then modernize. Otherwise, the platform with wither on the vine. > > I worked on systems in the other side of the ocean on a pensioner’s adsl (half the cost, half the speed). The only thing that works well is 3270, and technical people must know why it is better than RDP. While putting Racf on a z/VM and protecting the tcpip too well, I had to fall back to the emulator on the HMC. I am still dreading the moment that might happen again. To keep this alive, IBM should invest in Rexx, provide an OO version and make sure the compiler, which generates revenue, is uplevelled to 64 bit. If it chooses to back Python, that is fine with me, but it can be done without pitting it against Rexx. The adoption of Rexx was a groundswell against IBM management, that made strategic choices at the time like we need to use TSS, go off VM and convert to JES3. Then of course it should invest in Python to make sure its interfaces can call 24, 31 and 64 bit code, use or replicate the existing ADDRESS environments, and that will be a lot of work. Then it is to be seen if that investment can be recuperated. What would be even better is to let the customers decide and develop. For some reason IBM stopped taking care of the tools that brought in the money, and instead of letting customers take care of them, it sold off or outsourced a lot of stuff. There are a lot of people willing to work in this, but the source is closed and the development environments expensive. *That* is the real old-world thinking here. Other companies (I heard Amazon, lately) are writing whole API compatible layers now to enable companies to re-platform their stuff, those must be enormous investments, and IBM could obviate them with opening up the development environments and right-pricing the OS and hardware; put in a services model. It is no coincident that a machine with only IFL’s in it is a tenth of the price? Those miss one or two instructions - and that exactly shows you the value of z/OS and other things that are being called old. >> >> Best regards, >> >> René. >> >> >> >> >>>> On 5 Jan 2022, at 05:20, David Crayford <dcrayf...@gmail.com> wrote: >>> >>> On 5/1/22 12:01 pm, Bob Bridges wrote: >>>> Hm. If that's true of many shops (and it sounds plausible), maybe my >>>> sneers at the colleges' ignorant comments are ill-founded and they may be >>>> starting to win their war against the mainframe. Of course, if their >>>> efforts have a lot of effect then surely the need for CICS will reverse >>>> the trend...wouldn't you think? >>> I don't think the universities have got anything against the mainframe. >>> They don't have access to them. IBM should make mainframe emulators freely >>> available to all universities. Some of our best young guys have degrees in >>> engineering, not CS. It takes a long time to train new hires on the >>> mainframe. For example, JCL is arcane and generally despised by kids who >>> have grown up coding shell scripts. As you mentioned CICS it's worth noting >>> that CICS supports both Spring Boot and Node.js. They set the standard for >>> modernization. The open beta has a new has a new YAML file for resource >>> definitions that comes with a JSON schema so you can get context assist in >>> editors and validation in the DevOps pipeline. The CICS guys innovate and >>> modernize. I salute them. >>> >>> >>>> --- >>>> Bob Bridges, robhbrid...@gmail.com, cell 336 382-7313 >>>> >>>> /* [On the observation that every culture has words equating "uncivilized" >>>> and "foreigner":] Tragic? It's sidesplitting! It's the only joke the >>>> Almighty ever repeats, because it never grows stale with use. -from _Star >>>> Beast_ by Robert A Heinlein. */ >>>> >>>> -----Original Message----- >>>> From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU> On Behalf >>>> Of David Crayford >>>> Sent: Tuesday, January 4, 2022 21:48 >>>> >>>> It's true. The company I work for has been on-boarding millennials for >>>> years now to replace the guys that are retiring. I work with some very >>>> smart young guys, some of who write systems level code. None of them use >>>> REXX unless it's used in a product they are working on. We're ripping and >>>> replacing decades old build tools written in REXX with Python because it's >>>> become technical debt and no one can support it. >>>> >>>> The typical millenial uses: >>>> >>>> * An IDE such as VS Code, IntelliJ, Slickedit with plugins for >>>> mainframe languages and to access the MVS file system. >>>> * They don't use TSO or the ISPF editor so there is no need for REXX >>>> edit macros etc. ISPF is mainly used for SDSF and submitting jobs. >>>> * They work in a interactive shell and use UNIX utilties. >>>> * Everything is stored in Git repositories. >>>> * They code scripts in Python, Node.js or a JVM language. >>>> >>>>> --- On 5/1/22 10:06 am, Seymour J Metz wrote: >>>>> That's David Crayford, not me. I have no basis to either confirm or >>>>> contradict. It's unfortunate if true. >>>>> >>>>> ________________________________________ >>>>> From: Bob Bridges [robhbrid...@gmail.com] >>>>> Sent: Tuesday, January 4, 2022 9:03 PM >>>>> >>>>> Shmuel, I'm interested (and perhaps a little dismayed) at your third >>>>> point. I've gotten the impression, from reading ads about job openings, >>>>> that REXX programmers aren't very thick on the ground even at IBM where >>>>> you'd think it'd be pretty easy to find them. But "shrinking by the >>>>> day"? Where do you get that? I'm not disagreeing -- I have no data -- >>>>> but have you? >>>>> >>>>> -----Original Message----- >>>>> From: David Crayford >>>>> Sent: Tuesday, January 4, 2022 19:23 >>>>> >>>>> 1. IBM are too busy porting contemporary languages like Python, Golang >>>>> and Node.js >>>>> 2. No vendor will port ooRexx because there is no market for it that is >>>>> willing to pay support >>>>> 3. The pool of REXX developers is shrinking by the day and no young >>>>> people want to learn it unless they have to >>>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- >>>> For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, >>>> send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN >>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- >>> For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, >>> send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN >> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- >> For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, >> send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
