Re: Fw: BXLE instruction

[Gabe Goldberg]

Thank you, Bill Collier, for your note reminding me of the fun we had in those 
days (Summer 1968) when you taught and I attended 
hardware/software/architecture/programming classes.

From: William Collier
Sent: Wednesday, November 2, 2022 11:27 AM
To: Seymour J Metz
Subject: BXLE instruction

To:  Seymour J Metz mailto:sme...@gmu.edu>>

Hi,

  Last night I enjoyed reading your comment on the IBM-MAIN
listserv:

The slickest thing that I saw in OS/360 was code testing
successive bits using BXH and BXLE.

  I would like to respond with the note below.  I have followed
(I believe) all the directions for creating a password in order
to be allowed to post a note responding to your note.  It hasn't
worked (yet).  Would you, in the interest of timeliness, be
willing to post the note below on my behalf?  If not, that's OK.
I will figure it out.

Bill Collier

==

Re: End of several eras

  Back in 1965 IBM Poughkeepsie our job was to write an operating
system for System/360 which would fit into 1K bytes (sic) of an
8k byte machine.  I figured out how to use a BXLE instruction to
both test and advance a bit string in a register.  It saved us
maybe 30-some bytes.  I described this in IBM TR 00.1412-1, June
22, 1966.  Thank you, Seymour Metz, for your note reminding us of
the fun we had in those days.

  Bill Collier
  coll...@acm.org

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Re: Upgrade by cutting a wire?

[Gabe Goldberg]

Yes-and-no, sort-of:

On September 23, 1970, IBM announced the Model 145, a third model of the 
System/370, which was the first model to feature semiconductor main memory made 
from monolithic integrated circuits and was scheduled for delivery in the late 
summer of 1971. All subsequent S/370 models used such memory.

The IBM System/370 Model 138 which was announced Jun 30, 1976...

The IBM System/370 Model 148 had the same announcement and withdrawal dates as 
the Model 138

As with the option to field-upgrade a 135, a 370/145 could be
field-upgraded "at customer locations" to 148-level performance. The
upgraded 135 and 145 systems were "designated the Models 135-3 and
145-3."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_System/370

Announced six years apart (145/148) I suspect the upgrade was more than 
snipping. And 145 didn't become 148, was 145-3.

Mitre installed early 370/145 (whenever VM/370 Release 1 PLC 9 was current), 
then real 370/148 (I've no idea why 145 wasn't upgraded). Ah: 145 had up to 
.5MB IBM RAM, 148 had 2MB. Although other vendors added more memory than IBM 
supported. I did a competitive procurement to add .25MB to 145, cost $30,000. 
Couple years later, same for 148 to add 1MB -- also $30,000.

Maybe you're thinking of this:

Initially, the System/370 Model 145 did not support virtual memory.

Unlike the earlier Model 155 and 165 systems, for which an upgrade to virtual 
memory required the purchase of an expensive upgrade to add a DAT box,[5] the 
Model 145 already included an associative memory[6][7]: CPU 117-CPU 129  used 
by the microcode for the DOS compatibility feature from its first shipments in 
June 1971;[6] the same hardware was used by the microcode for DAT.[7]: CPU 139  
Although IBM famously chose to exclude virtual storage from the S/370 
announcement, that decision was being reconsidered during the completion of the 
145 engineering, partly because of virtual memory experience at CSC and 
elsewhere. The 145 microcode architecture simplified the addition of virtual 
storage, allowing this capability to be present in early 145s without the 
extensive hardware modifications needed in other models. However, IBM did not 
document the 145's virtual storage capability, nor annotate the relevant bits 
in the control registers and PSW that were displayed on the operator control 
panel when selected using the roller switches. The Reference and Change bits of 
the Storage-protection Keys, however, were labeled on the rollers, a dead 
giveaway to anyone who had worked with the earlier 360/67. Existing S/370-145 
customers were happy to learn that they did not have to purchase a hardware 
upgrade in order to run DOS/VS or OS/VS1 (or OS/VS2 Release 1 – which was 
possible, but not common because of the limited amount of main storage 
available on the S/370-145).

This resulted in two advantages of the 145 over the 155 and 165:

370/145 customers did not have to wait as long for this lack of virtual 
memory to be remedied[b]
there was no need to buy extra hardware: An upgrade to the 145's microcode 
through a new microcode floppy disk[8] enabled virtual memory capability.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_System/370_Model_145

Date:Fri, 31 May 2024 08:51:22 -0500
From:"Lionel B. Dyck"
Subject: Re: Upgrade by cutting a wire?

I recall hearing the 370/135 and 370/145 could be upgraded to 370/138 or
370/148 with a snip but that was 2ne/3rd hand.


Lionel B. Dyck <><
Github:https://github.com/lbdyck
System Z Enthusiasts Discord:https://discord.gg/sze

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IBM and the Transformation of Corporate Design - CHM

[Gabe Goldberg]

Until the arrival of Elliot Noyes as IBM consulting director of design, 
IBM’s many office products were a confusion of styles: from 1930s-era 
punched card equipment—complete with steel Queen Anne legs—to room sized 
computers inflected with mid-century styling, festooned with tiny signal 
lamps. As IBM consolidated its various product lines in the early 1960s, 
most importantly with the 1964 System/360 mainframe, it also 
consolidated its corporate style: Noyes simplified IBM’s design 
vernacular to represent clean typography, a minimalist aesthetic, 
unified branding and office equipment and computers that were intuitive 
and easy to use.


Along with the corporate overhaul by Noyes and his associates, husband 
and wife team Charles and Ray Eames also worked closely with IBM to 
re-imagine the company for the 20th century. While Elliot Noyes was an 
industrial designer who focused on corporate design and branding, the 
Eameses were renowned for their contributions to furniture design, 
architecture, and multimedia productions.


https://computerhistory.org/blog/ibm-and-the-transformation-of-corporate-design 


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Re: Learning one's tools

[Gabe Goldberg]

I recently argued with someone -- not here! -- when he was enthusiastic about 
AI generating code. Poof, no programmers, he said. What about bugs, I asked? 
Human-generated code has bugs, so will AI coding, since it will be trained on 
... human coding. No problem he said, people will check the AI generated code.

So they won't be programmers, I said, but they'll be good at desk checking 
code? And reading code will replace humans designing it and testing it? And 
that's more efficient than human coders? And AI code will likely not have 
comments/documentation. Won't that be fun debugging/maintaining/enhancing. What 
could go wrong?

AI coding assistant, sure. AI programmers, maybe not (yet?).


Bob Bridges  said:

To rant on a related subject, I once worked at a company that instituted code reviews; a 
new program would be gone over by a half-dozen coworkers to be sure it adhered to local 
standards.  This sort of thing is always painful to the coder, and nevertheless (I admit 
reluctantly) can have considerable value if done right.  One problem I had with it, 
though, is that the standards we created for ourselves admitted that there are times when 
exceptions should be made for special cases, and yet when those cases arose no exceptions 
were ever allowed; the team invariably flinched, leaned back in their seats and said 
"no, that's not according to our standards".

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One of the Internet’s Oldest Software Archives Is Shutting Down | WIRED

[Gabe Goldberg]

The Hobbes OS/2 Archive has been an institution for over three decades. 
Soon, it’ll be gone.


https://www.wired.com/story/hobbes-os2-archive-shutting-down/

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Tribute: Niklaus Wirth, 1934-2024 - The New Stack

[Gabe Goldberg]

Remembering the creator of Pascal, a champion of lean and elegant code, 
and a vital figure in the evolution of software development.


https://thenewstack.io/tribute-niklaus-wirth-1934-2024/

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Want to declutter? Here's a good home for ... stuff

[Gabe Goldberg]

System Source Computer Museum -- https://museum.syssrc.com/

Contact:

Bob Roswell brosw...@syssrc.com
Brendan Becker bloopmus...@gmail.com

...about potential donations.

I toured the place last week, it's amazing -- huge and diverse 
collection, nicely displayed. Great curators, hungry for more stuff.


I'm donating my Texas Instruments Programmer II hex calculator, my 
mechanical (slides and a stylus) hex calculator, an IBM flowcharting 
template, an IBM print ruler, the "System Programming" sign I guess I 
stole from Mitre, and I haven't yet looked in storage bins and dark 
closet corners for more. Oh, and several hundred buttons collected at SHARE.


They're a non-profit so will provide a festive donation acknowledgement 
form to wave at accountants. Same as all museums, they won't assess 
value -- that's up to donor.


If you're anywhere near Fort Hunt, MD it's worth a visit.

I'm just the messenger, don't know much more than this.

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Re: With regrets, after many years I will no longer be following IBM-MAIN

[Gabe Goldberg]

For decades, I've wished for a list setting:

Set bozo  on

...which would allow the subject person to post and see posts reflected back, 
but not inflict them on anyone else. Talking into a bottomless well would get 
boring.

Ed Jaffe

On 8/30/2023 7:12 AM, Kirk Wolf wrote:


Dear ibm-mainers,

It is with regrets that after many years I will no longer be actively following 
IBM-MAIN.

The list has become intolerable because of trolling, off-topic thread hijacking, and 
personal attacks. The signal-to-noise ratio is approaching "1".   My assessment 
is that without some form of community governance and real moderation, IBM-MAIN will soon 
be completely useless except for the archives.


This is not the first time this forum has been hijacked. Everyone knows
who the troublemaker(s) is(are).

What I do is set up email filters to send those posts directly to my
Trash folder. I never see them.

Doing so is a lot easier than pressing the  key over and over...

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Re: Help for US Talent

[Gabe Goldberg]

Mostly true.

Except when I was leaving my first job at IBM/Poughkeepsie (IBM was great place to start career, but I hated 
rural POK having grown up and attended college in New York City) I told recruiters to focus on NY and Boston, 
where I had friends and relatives. A recruiter who didn't follow my instructions asked, "How about 
Washington?". "Sure", I said, "I have relatives there, have enjoyed visiting". So I 
came to DC area to work at Mitre, spent rest of my life/career here.

Robert Frost:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

So I forgave him.

...and regarding a point someone else made, once my IBM manager determined that 
I was going to an IBM customer, not competitor, I was able to work through the 
long notice I'd given to stop my manager from continuing to try to find a 
transfer for me.

Funny, as I was leaving, more than one person said that was a great career move 
-- go work for a customer or two, then come back with real-world 
knowledge/skills, which were too scarce at IBM. I did the first part but forgot 
to return.


Grant Taylor

On 8/14/23 3:23 PM, Bob Bridges wrote:


Am I missing something?  Why the interest in making life hard for
recruiters?  Ok, I'm a contractor so my continued employment depends
on their existence.  Still, why?


Recruiters aren't a problem if they are/good/  recruiters.  As in they
pay attention to what you tell them and they don't bother you with
things that don't qualify.



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ChatGPT writes mainframe jokes for St. Patrick;s

[Gabe Goldberg]

Tech Funny: Happy St. Patrick's AI | TechBeacon

He asked Bing AI to come up with several jokes and other funny tidbits 
about TechBeacon's coverage areas—all with a St. Patrick's Day twist.


https://techbeacon.com/enterprise-it/tech-funny-happy-st-patricks-ai

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Re: Songs of the IBM

[Gabe Goldberg]

That matches what I heard somewhere about IBM's policies (at least back then) 
on liquor and sex: Not on IBM time or property.

"Farley, Peter"  said:

I was told that TJ Junior was a teetotaler - frowned highly on any kind of alcohol 
consumption and didn't like to promote anyone who imbibed.  No alcohol at all at company 
"events".

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How to Make (IBM) Corporate Holiday Parties Even More Awkward?

[Gabe Goldberg]

IBM — then called “The Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company” — was 
founded in 1911 when a bunch of smaller companies combined into one 
larger one. At its inception, IBM had roughly 1,300 employees, making it 
a large employer on day one. And when Thomas J. Watson joined the 
company in 1914, it really took off. Watson was chairman and CEO of IBM 
from then until his death in 1956. When Watson died, IBM employed 
roughly 72,500 employees. Watson was known to be a talented but 
unscrupulous leader who believed that loyalty to one’s employer was a 
hallmark of business success. So, he asked his employees to sing.


https://nowiknow.com/how-to-make-corporate-holiday-parties-even-more-awkward/ 


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NOTSP Tech giants, including Meta, Google, and Amazon, want to put an end to leap seconds | ZDNet

[Gabe Goldberg]

For decades, we've used leap seconds to keep our computers in sync with 
Earth's rotation time. Now, Meta and many others argue that new leap 
seconds are more trouble than they're worth.


In her hit song, Cher sang, "If I could turn back time 
." For her, that would be a 
good thing. But in the computing world, Meta, formerly Facebook, 
believes it would be a very bad thing indeed. In fact, Meta wants to get 
rid of leap seconds 
, 
which keep computing time in sync with Earth's rotational time.


Meta's not the only one that feels that way. The US National Institute 
of Standards and Technology (NIST), its French equivalent (the Bureau 
International de Poids et Mesures or BIPM), Amazon, Google, and 
Microsoft all want to put an end to leap seconds.


Why? As Meta explained in a blog post 
, 
"We bump into problems whenever a leap second is introduced. And because 
it's such a rare event, it devastates the community every time it 
happens. With a growing demand for clock precision across all 
industries, the leap second is now causing more damage than good, 
resulting in disturbances and outages."


Therefore, Meta concludes, we should simply "stop the future 
introduction of leap seconds."


https://www.zdnet.com/home-and-office/networking/tech-giants-want-to-put-an-end-to-leap-seconds/ 



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NOTSP The Latin of Software Code Is Thriving - The New York Times

[Gabe Goldberg]

Next time you laugh at musty old tech, remember that new technologies 
are often built on it.


Caitlin Mooney is 24 years old and infatuated with technology that dates 
to the age of Sputnik.


Mooney, a recent New Jersey Institute of Technology graduate in computer 
science, is a fan of technologies that were hot a half-century ago, 
including computer mainframes and software called COBOL that powers 
them. That stuff won’t win any cool points in Silicon Valley, but it is 
essential technology at big banks, insurance companies, government 
agencies and other large institutions.


During Mooney’s job hunt, potential employers saw her expertise and 
wanted to talk about more senior positions than she was seeking. “They 
would get really excited,” Mooney told me. She’s now trying to decide 
between multiple job offers.


The resilience of decades-old computing technologies and the people who 
specialize in them shows that new technologies are often built on lots 
of old tech.


When you deposit money using your bank’s iPhone app, behind the scenes 
it probably involves computers that are the progeny of those used in the 
Apollo moon missions. (Also, half-century-old computer code is baked 
into the iPhone software.)


It’s often seen as a problem or a punchline that so much musty 
technology is still around. But it’s not necessarily an issue.


https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/06/technology/cobol-jobs.html?smid=url-share 


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Buttons, we got buttons...

[Gabe Goldberg]

Bill Bitner (just retired from IBM Endicott after 36 years 11 months) 
has a SHARE/VM/etc. button collection.


At recent VM Workshop celebrating VM's 50th anniversary, I promised to 
share mine, send him any he'd like to add to his trove.


So here are lots of buttons spanning decades!

Spread out on basement floor.

https://share.icloud.com/photos/09b-e_A0o9IhBXd6qQ_puAyng

Bunch of photos and a panning video.

I told him to pick what he wants before my wife makes me pick them up!

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Looked at Destination Z lately?

[Gabe Goldberg]

www.destinationz.org isn't quite what one would expect for IBM's 
mainframe community website.


Did someone let domain registration expire, was it hacked or redirected?

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Museum Restores 21 Rare Videos from Legendary 1976 Computing Conference - Slashdot

[Gabe Goldberg]

https://developers.slashdot.org/story/22/06/12/0023234/museum-restores-21-rare-videos-from-legendary-1976-computing-conference 



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Re: IBM ordered to pay $1.6b to BMC

[Gabe Goldberg]

I don't have a dog in this ridiculous fight -- though I've also lived a career 
based on IBM mainframes, including working for IBM. I long ago sold my shares 
because the company was sadly heading downhill. But I'll chime in anyway. I was 
apparently correct because IBM shares are now at about the price where I sold, 
while other tech companies and the broader markets have increased greatly. I'm 
no more an IBM hater than zMan, just also an experienced observer over decades.

Bill, are you familiar withhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect  
which you've greatly demonstrated? I doubt that everyone on the list would have 
clicked the link zMan supplied but I'm sure that after your tediously arguing 
with the article, everyone has clicked just to see what it's about. So if it's 
misinformation, you've greatly increased its distribution.

Asserting infallibility in predicting outcome of litigation is silly. First, 
you don't have all the facts. Second, you're not qualified on the law. Third, 
you don't know what arguments will be made on the appeal necessary because the 
case has been decided. Fourth, you don't know whether the appeal will be 
accepted. Fifth, if it's accepted, you don't know what appeal judges will 
decide.

You emphasize your qualifications to pontificate on esoteric legal matters 
because 30 years ago you were a cop and back then you were qualified to study 
to be a lawyer? Seriously?

You accuse others of being IBM haters, while you're quite the IBM worshiper. I don't see 
questioning or criticizing IBM as "hating", but your reflexive defense of IBM 
on matters small and large really does come across as worship. Ceaselessly arguing that 
IBM can do no wrong makes your opinions less than credible.

On Fri, Jun 3, 2022 at 8:54 PM Bill Johnson 
<0047540adefe-dmarc-requ...@listserv.ua.edu> wrote:


Tony thinks IBM is handing over 1.6 billion. Because the judge ordered it.
In the article it states IBM is going to appeal. Which means they don’t pay
anything, yet. Once they file a Notice of Appeal, usually within 30 days,
with documentation of why they think the trial judge was wrong, the appeals
court will decide whether the case gets heard. (Very likely) It gets
scheduled, might be a while, and the appeals court might overturn or uphold
the judgment. If upheld, IBM can appeal further. If overturned, BMC can
appeal. Meanwhile, BMC & IBM can negotiate a settlement while the appeals
play out. It could take years. No money changes hands while it plays out.
No matter what the judge said.
I was in law enforcement and was going to be a lawyer about 20 years ago.
Took the LSAT, passed with flying colors and was offered seats at a number
of law schools nationwide.


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Fwd: IBM Alumni Directory

[Gabe Goldberg]

I'm just the messenger...

 Forwarded Message 
Subject:IBM Alumni Directory
Date:   Tue, 30 Jun 2020 15:59:22 + (UTC)
From:   Bob McGrath 
To: i...@agentsadvanceinc.com



Spending time updating the online IBM Alumni Directory while trying to 
shelter in place.


Could you check your info by going to the web site (www.IBMalumni.com 
), add or change and submit the data, or let 
me know by email (ibmalu...@aol.com) if it is accurate as well as any 
other additions, changes or corrections you can provide.


If you can include information about other alumni, it would make the 
directory more accurate and useful.


I enter all the data personally to avoid hackers and pranksters from 
messing with the web site info.


There are more than 26,500 alumni listed. (10,260 deceased).

Many thanks.

Bob McGrath

DPD & WTC (1953-1970)



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Re: Here we go again

[Gabe Goldberg]

When I joined Mitre Corporation in 1971, my first TIAA-CREF end-of-year 
retirement statement predicted benefits I'd receive starting February 1, 
2012. I suspect they'd been calculating/storing/displaying 21st century 
dates long before they needed one for me. Banks, insurance companies, 
investment organizations, etc. handled this routinely because they had 
to; no tradeoff was available for them between data storage and 
now/later handling far-off dates. Others could/did ignore Y2K because 
their business didn't depend on handling it. For a while.


Seymour J Metz  said

We had well over 20 years of warning on Y2K; management preferred to 
ignore it. Apres moi le deluge (the balloon won't go up before I retire.)


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IBM will offer free COBOL training to address overloaded unemployment systems

[Gabe Goldberg]

IBM is releasing a free training course next week to teach the 
60-year-old programming language COBOL to coders. It is also launching a 
forum where those with knowledge of the language can be matched with 
companies in need of help maintaining their critical systems.


The moves come in response to desperate pleas by state governors for 
anyone with knowledge of COBOL to volunteer their time to help keep 
unemployment systems functioning, a critical need as the coronavirus has 
resulted in an unprecedented surge in people being laid off and having 
to claim unemployment benefits.


https://www.inputmag.com/tech/ibm-will-offer-free-cobol-training-to-address-overloaded-unemployment-systems

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Re: New Jersey Pleas for COBOL Coders for Mainframes Amid Coronavirus Pandemic

[Gabe Goldberg]

Better article:

https://freedomafterthesharks.com/2016/06/27/exactly-what-is-cobol-and-why-is-cobol-still-a-widely-used-language-in-it/

Phil Smith III  said:

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/new-jersey-cobol-coders-mainframes-coronavirus 



Reasonably bad article but kinda funny/ironic/something.

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Re: it was 20 years ago today

[Gabe Goldberg]

And this mess:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/23/style/y2k-bug-millennials.html

On 1/3/2020 1:23 PM, Gabe Goldberg wrote:
Just came across:  ‘Here We Go. The Chaos Is Starting’: An Oral 
History of Y2K


https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/security/a30338692/y2k-panic/

I still have about half the Y2K books I bought, figure they'll go with 
the next Great Purge. Circa 1995 I thought of doing "The Y2K Handbook" 
(like "The REXX Handbook" and two VM/ESA handbooks co-edited with Phil 
Smith) but never got around to it. Likely for the best, considering 
the tsunami of books published.



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Re: it was 20 years ago today

[Gabe Goldberg]

Just came across:  ‘Here We Go. The Chaos Is Starting’: An Oral History 
of Y2K


https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/security/a30338692/y2k-panic/

I still have about half the Y2K books I bought, figure they'll go with 
the next Great Purge. Circa 1995 I thought of doing "The Y2K Handbook" 
(like "The REXX Handbook" and two VM/ESA handbooks co-edited with Phil 
Smith) but never got around to it. Likely for the best, considering the 
tsunami of books published.


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IBM Destination z - Of Elephants and Mainframes

[Gabe Goldberg]

Think back… think way back, possibly to before you were born. Think of 
the reasons why SHARE was founded in 1955, and the main activities of 
SHARE. Once upon a time, when electronic computing technology was still 
being figured out, each new machine was so different from its 
predecessors that it was necessary to rewrite a whole new set of 
utilities and drivers and applications for it. Even Assembly language 
wasn’t available until 1957 (and the first COBOL compiler didn’t come 
out until 1960) so most of this stuff had to be manually entered in 
machine language.


http://destinationz.org/Mainframe-Solution/Trends/elephants-and-mainframes

Um, no. ACM SIGPLAN History of Programming Languages Conference 1978 
article on FORTRAN says:


Page 166 1.3 Programming Systems in 1954

Most "automatic programming" systems  were either assembly programs, or 
subroutine-fixing programs, or, most popularly, interpretive systems to 
provide floating point and indexing operations.


---

That's far beyond machine language three years before article claims 
anything more advanced than that was used.


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Re: Help wanted | Computerworld Shark Tank

[Gabe Goldberg]

A friend had this long-ago story: he worked at Data General, on a not-yet 
released product. He saw an ad seeking someone with n years experience on the 
product. He was the only person on the planet qualified and he wasn't looking 
to change jobs. Uh oh.

On Fri, Jul 19, 2019 at 7:37 AM Mark Regan  wrote:


Not directly mainframe related, but I think you will get the picture.
Help wanted Looking for someone under 30 with 20+ years of experience.


Nothing new. I don't remember the exact situation, but I do remember an add
in the paper version of ComputerWorld not too long after MVS became
available for a system programmer with "n" years of MVS experience. Where
"n" was longer than MVS had been available.





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DASD nostalgia

[Gabe Goldberg]

I mentioned a while ago remembering a friend's long-ago story about disk 
head crashes at DEC, resolved by rotating drive cabinet so platters 
aligned with loading dock of old mill building (rather than rotating 
perpendicular to dock's orientation). Problem had been head crashes when 
trucks backed into loading dock and hit/shook building. I asked my 
friend Who Was There (and who spent his career in storage 
architecture/design/etc.). His response:


The disk story is, in fact, true. The disks were from Burroughs, 
single-platter and huge (3 foot diameter) with a head per track, if I 
recall - no seeking. They were in Building 5, just under the loading 
docks. They each held about 10MB.


We also received another disk from Burroughs  (multiple huge horizontal 
platters, seek arms like boxer's arms, heat exchanger) that was so huge, 
the freight elevator took it down to the basement lab for testing but 
couldn't bring it back up again after - we had to partially disassemble 
it and bring it up in pieces. I think it held 50MB.


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Re: mainframe hacking "success stories"?

[Gabe Goldberg]

Long ago I was asked for advice on proving that it was unsafe running 
multiple levels of classified material on VM, in a data center where the 
manager had -- of course -- insisted that it was.


Whether or not that was true (and whether or not it could be proven), I 
suggested first experimenting with issues such as Tim mentions. Such as 
starting at the system S and Y disks (where IBM and installation system 
software, utilities, and tools lived), examining Execs for Link 
commands, and following them where they led. A few days later, the 
tester placed a printout of the -- unencrypted, with passwords -- system 
directory on the manager's desk.


I don't know what followed but wonder if they were still allowed to run 
any classified work.


Timothy Sipples  said:

That said, I'm quite concerned (paranoid, even) because these wonderful
security features so frequently either aren't implemented at all or are
implemented badly, inconsistently. Also, unfortunately, there are far too
many organizations running unsupported technologies with known security
vulnerabilities, and there are even more that do not have reasonable,
timely preventive maintenance programs that they execute consistently and
well.

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Re: mainframe hacking "success stories"?

[Gabe Goldberg]

I had a Sev 1 APAR against PROFS (or when it became OfficeVision) by 
pointing out that (at least on VM) sending a document with embedded .sy 
control word could, say, quietly format recipient's A disk (for those 
who've never touched VM, that's a VM user's personal storage). Tricky 
fix was making NOSY (or whatever option disabled processing .sy) the 
default. Presumably the problem and fix applied wherever OV appeared.


Seymour J Metz  said correctly:

> And when some "genius" at Microsoft thought it would be a good idea to
> be able to embed arbitrary code in a document, it meant that someone 
could
> do anything they wanted to do to your computer just by sending you a 
document.


To be fair, that issue existed in Script way back when.

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Fwd: Query for article on testing mainframe systems, applications, networks

[Gabe Goldberg]

I've had a small number of great responses to this but nothing like the 
number I usually get to queries. Surprising, I thought this would be an 
interesting topic with many people commenting...


Testing -- what's that? How do you test/validate z/OS 
systems/applications/networks?


 Forwarded Message 
Subject: 	Query for article on testing mainframe systems, applications, 
networks

Date:   Mon, 29 Apr 2019 12:41:17 -0400
From:   Gabe Goldberg 



Query for article on testing mainframe systems, applications, networks

This is for website/magazine I'd not seen before: https://increment.com/
It's described: Increment is a print and digital magazine about how
teams build and operate software systems at scale.

It has an interesting approach, devoting issues to topic themes such as
internationalization, security, documentation, programming languages,
etc. My article is for an issue on testing.

---

Modern systems -- especially mainframes and everything connected to them
-- require modern testing tools and procedures. The days are gone when
it was sufficient to SYSGEN, IPL, (maybe) run a few test batch jobs or
interactive scripts, and wait for user feedback. (The old joke, of
course, was that users existed to test system programmers' system
programs.)

Testing is often misunderstood and neglected when it should be a
combination of creative art and rigorous engineering. In these days of
distributed, mixed-platform, and cloud-hosted applications, potentially
targeting millions of users, developers casually testing their own code
is also folly. Comprehensive test suites and cumulative regression tests
are essential tools for preventing everything from ugly interfaces to
catastrophic visible failures.

How widely used - and effective -- are techniques such as continuous
integration (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_integration -- the
practice of merging all developer working copies to a shared mainline
several times a day) and DevOps (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DevOps --
a set of software development practices that combines software
development and information technology operations)?

Do testing practices differ for GUI-developed applications? Or GUI apps
themselves -- same as for complex spreadsheets -- is the second "G" in
GIGO "gospel" or "garbage"?

So -- what are current best practices for testing mainframe (z/OS, z/VM,
z/VSE, Linux) technology? This covers everything from applying one PTF to
installing a new operating system release/version, and from verifying
batch/TSO operation to validating end-to-end transaction processing
across networks and multiple servers.

Besides testing system updates and local applications, how do you test
IBM program products and ISV products?

ISVs -- how do YOU test products across supported environments?

While the article isn't explicitly about tuning or performance, surely
those are critical assessments too when making changes. And, to keep
this topic manageable, it does NOT include debugging when tests fail.

As usual, please copy replies to me directly to avoid them being buried
in list digests.

Thanks.

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Query for article on testing mainframe systems, applications, networks

[Gabe Goldberg]

Query for article on testing mainframe systems, applications, networks

This is for website/magazine I'd not seen before: https://increment.com/
It's described: Increment is a print and digital magazine about how
teams build and operate software systems at scale.

It has an interesting approach, devoting issues to topic themes such as
internationalization, security, documentation, programming languages,
etc. My article is for an issue on testing.

---

Modern systems -- especially mainframes and everything connected to them
-- require modern testing tools and procedures. The days are gone when
it was sufficient to SYSGEN, IPL, (maybe) run a few test batch jobs or
interactive scripts, and wait for user feedback. (The old joke, of
course, was that users existed to test system programmers' system
programs.)

Testing is often misunderstood and neglected when it should be a
combination of creative art and rigorous engineering. In these days of
distributed, mixed-platform, and cloud-hosted applications, potentially
targeting millions of users, developers casually testing their own code
is also folly. Comprehensive test suites and cumulative regression tests
are essential tools for preventing everything from ugly interfaces to
catastrophic visible failures.

How widely used - and effective -- are techniques such as continuous
integration (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_integration -- the
practice of merging all developer working copies to a shared mainline
several times a day) and DevOps (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DevOps --
a set of software development practices that combines software
development and information technology operations)?

Do testing practices differ for GUI-developed applications? Or GUI apps
themselves -- same as for complex spreadsheets -- is the second "G" in
GIGO "gospel" or "garbage"?

So -- what are current best practices for testing mainframe (z/OS, z/VM,
z/VSE, Linux) technology? This covers everything from applying one PTF to
installing a new operating system release/version, and from verifying
batch/TSO operation to validating end-to-end transaction processing
across networks and multiple servers.

Besides testing system updates and local applications, how do you test
IBM program products and ISV products?

ISVs -- how do YOU test products across supported environments?

While the article isn't explicitly about tuning or performance, surely
those are critical assessments too when making changes. And, to keep
this topic manageable, it does NOT include debugging when tests fail.

As usual, please copy replies to me directly to avoid them being buried
in list digests.

Thanks.

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Re: Incoming | Computerworld SHARK TANK

[Gabe Goldberg]

Indeed. Long ago, at Mitre -- relatively small account (360/50 running OS/MVT 
when I joined, 4341 and 4381 running VM as Single System Image when I left) 
that punched above its weight, we had an FE room with supplies/manuals/etc. -- 
including microcode listings as long as they were available (very interesting 
reading!). FE wasn't there full time but he was a regular visitor and great 
partner. Same for PSR -- wasn't there full-time but came when needed or just to 
check on how things were going. When IBM announced Support Center it was a very 
hard sell convincing us (me!) that it would be an improvement over in-person 
live-person familiar-person who knew the account very well. Since IBM wanted us 
to be early adopter of Support Center when PSRs were still available, we made 
them promise we could revert to PSR if we were unhappy, and we got a few 
accommodations to how we liked to do business. I guess that was the old IBM...

"Schuffenhauer, Mark"  said:

When I was first working we had IBM folks in our building, every day, with 
their own desks.   Opening a ticket involved talking to their desk and 
explaining.  Amazingly someone would often call as soon as I got back to my 
desk, sometimes even before.  The PMR's often were already opened.  I remember 
cutting tapes and mailing them to IBM for PMR's.

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Re: Incoming | Computerworld SHARK TANK

[Gabe Goldberg]

No kidding. Long ago, monitor on a friend's PS/2 failed. Being a mainframer she 
was accustomed to calling IBM for software/hardware support -- so she called 
Support Center. They scheduled a visit. I was home, fellow showed up in 
unmarked white van, swapped monitors, cleaned up minimal packing material 
debris, and left. Not the usual process for a consumer product.

Tom Brennan

IBM was often amazing with repairs.  I remember one morning my 3278 tube
died.  I went to lunch and it was fixed by the time I got back.

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Re: Incoming | Computerworld SHARK TANK

[Gabe Goldberg]

From a friend:

I believe the head crash story is true. I worked in The Mill and had 
heard about that. Lending credibility to that story was another: that on 
hot days in the summer, before the Mill was air conditioned, lanolin 
used to seep out of the wooden floors and you could easily slip and 
fall. Before DEC bought the Mill, it was a woolen mill. You could still 
smell the lanolin in many of the buildings when I worked there, so I 
tended to believe those stories. Another - not so benign - was that 
during the years when circuit boards used to be manufactured there, 
waste chemicals (including lead solder, etching acid, etc.) were dumped 
into the pond next to one of the buildings. This pond fed into the 
nearby Assabet river. DEC had to do quite a bit of cleanup, but the pond 
was never completely cleaned (last I heard), it was eventually just 
sealed off so that whatever was left remained there and didn't pollute 
the river anymore. Wouldn't want to eat any of the fish out of that 
pond. There were surely many other stories that I never heard.


On 4/13/2019 12:16 PM, Gabe Goldberg wrote:
Many years ago I had friends in old DEC building in Maynard, MA. They 
had story of periodic head crashes on monster disk drives with 
vertically spinning platters. They realized cause: trucks backing into 
loading dock hitting and shaking the building -- since platters were 
oriented perpendicular to truck motion. Solution: turn drives 90 
degrees to align platters with truck motion. At worst, I/O errors but 
no head crashes (I guess heads flew much higher than on today's 
devices). I'll ask veterans I know of that time/place to confirm...


ITschak Mugzach said:

That reminds me another story. ten years ago a client of us installed 
a new
hitachi disk array. The technician installed and configured the array, 
but

for some reasons, it was not immediately used by the client. few days
later, the client tried to connect to the array and it was down. it was
repeatedly don everyday afterwards. investigation showed that the the
people who cleans the computer room unplugged the power for the vacuum
cleaner... The array was using a standard power plug.


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Re: Incoming | Computerworld SHARK TANK

[Gabe Goldberg]

Many years ago I had friends in old DEC building in Maynard, MA. They had story 
of periodic head crashes on monster disk drives with vertically spinning 
platters. They realized cause: trucks backing into loading dock hitting and 
shaking the building -- since platters were oriented perpendicular to truck 
motion. Solution: turn drives 90 degrees to align platters with truck motion. 
At worst, I/O errors but no head crashes (I guess heads flew much higher than 
on today's devices). I'll ask veterans I know of that time/place to confirm...

ITschak Mugzach said:

That reminds me another story. ten years ago a client of us installed a new
hitachi disk array. The technician installed and configured the array, but
for some reasons, it was not immediately used by the client. few days
later, the client tried to connect to the array and it was down. it was
repeatedly don everyday afterwards. investigation showed that the the
people who cleans the computer room unplugged the power for the vacuum
cleaner... The array was using a standard power plug.

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Annual Enterprise Computing Community Conference

[Gabe Goldberg]

I don't think I've seen this on these lists -- it's been highly 
recommended to me over several years!


---

11th Annual ECC Conference, June 9 -  1 1, 2019

Marist College, Poughkeepsie, New York

https://ecc.marist.edu/

https://ecc.marist.edu/web/conference2010

The 11th Annual ECC National Conference will focus on topics of interest 
for students, faculty and industry professionals including keynote 
presentations, concurrent technical/educational sessions and panel 
discussions.  Presentations may also cover other topics relevant to 
enterprise computing.Themes for the 11th Annual ECC Conference 
are:Technology in Healthcare and Big Data


https://files.constantcontact.com/1a04bbc8001/0d6fe97c-6e64-4428-85fe-388b2be364e6.pdf

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NOTSP US Patent for Drone delivery of coffee based on a cognitive state of an individual Patent (Patent # 10,040,551 issued August 7, 2018) - Justia Patents Search

[Gabe Goldberg]

Coffee or other drink, for example a caffeine containing drink, is 
delivered to individuals that would like the drink, or who have a 
predetermined cognitive state, using an unmanned aerial vehicle 
(UAV)/drone. The drink is connected to the UAV, and the UAV flies to an 
area including people, and uses sensors to scan the people for an 
individual who has gestured that they would like the drink, or for whom 
an electronic analysis of sensor data indicates to be in a predetermined 
cognitive state. The UAV then flies to the individual to deliver the 
drink. The analysis can include profile data of people, including 
electronic calendar data, which can be used to determine a potentially 
predetermined cognitive state.


https://patents.justia.com/patent/10040551

https://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/the-best-invention-of-2018-is-ibm-coffee-drone.html 
-- note graphics


https://www.popularmechanics.com/flight/drones/a22813997/ibm-patent-coffee-delivery-drone/

Etc.

...so this is how IBM wins the patents battle every year.

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The Yoda of Silicon Valley - The New York Times

[Gabe Goldberg]

Donald Knuth, master of algorithms, reflects on 50 years of his 
opus-in-progress, “The Art of Computer Programming.”


https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/17/science/donald-knuth-computers-algorithms-programming.html

...plenty here on computers, programming, mathematics, typesetting.

I've forever had Volumes 1 and 3 of his series but can't claim to have 
read them completely. He's writing them fast than I'm reading them.


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Charles B. Wang, former Islanders owner dies, his attorney says | Newsday

[Gabe Goldberg]

Born in Shanghai, China, he moved to the United States with his family 
at the age of 8. Wang later founded CA Technologies and led several Long 
Island-based philanthropic efforts.


https://www.newsday.com/long-island/computer-associates-charles-wang-1.22209693

I met him when he and Russ Artzt ran a small company called Standard 
Data out of a grubby midtown Manhattan office. I sure wouldn't have 
guessed what he'd accomplish in CA. Along with philanthropies mentioned, 
he donated generously to Brooklyn technical High School, which I 
attended a few yeas after him. In the minimal dealings I had with him -- 
very early, and then briefly in mid-1990s -- he was very pleasant.


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Destination z article: Ensuring Data Storage Longevity

[Gabe Goldberg]

Ensuring Data Storage Longevity

Backup and Archival Data

Data comes in many varieties, related to why it exists and how it's 
stored: active, warehouse, transactional, backup, archival and more. 
I'll skip over the first three forms and focus on backup data (briefly) 
and archival data (primarily).


Because backup data recovers from human error, equipment failures and 
external catastrophes, its only reason for existing is restoring data to 
a recent image. Archival data may be needed for legal or industry 
compliance, historical recordkeeping, merger and acquisition due 
diligence, unanticipated queries/searches, or reconstructing operational 
environments. Backup data can be stored piecemeal as long as it can be 
completely restored. Archival data is holistic, a complete/consistent 
image. For a detailed explanation of why multiple backup copies—even 
cloud storage—don't constitute archived data, see this Storage 
Switzerland blog: https://bit.ly/2DzoJrR


http://destinationz.org/Mainframe-Solution/Trends/Ensuring-Data-Storage-Longevity
https://bit.ly/2NiJVSS

...for non-technical folk reading this (it's going to diverse lists) -- 
your data needs backup and archiving too. And backup still isn't archive.


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Computer History (Was: CLIP?)

[Gabe Goldberg]

Remember http://www.computerhistory.org/ -- Computer History Museum.

They love artifacts, documentation, literature, memories:
http://www.computerhistory.org/artifactdonation/

Date:Sun, 20 May 2018 03:39:44 -0500
From:Brian Westerman
Subject: Re: CLIP?

He originally had well thousands of boxes of cards but I had to get rid of 
several, mostly because they had deteriorated so much plus I had donated 
hundreds of boxes that made up (I think all of) cp/67 (which I think later 
became cp/370) to MIT and I gave away all of the  96 column cards (1,000+ 
boxes) that made up the original System/3 OS and literally thousands of 
programs and sub-programs (plus a working system/3 model 12) to Cambridge.

The index was originally a program that he wrote which had all of the boxes 
searchable by the nnn....nnn number he has on the outside and it 
tells the relative offset of the beginning and end of each program within each 
box.  The program itself was originally written in (I think) PL/s, also on 
cards, but I rewrote it in assembler for him back in the 80's and helped him 
(start to) re-catalog it all.

He originally kept it in the basement of our house that was a fairly good 
controlled environment because it held several iterations and parts of 
mainframes and  micros that he worked with over the years, but when he got 
older I guess he decided that the environmentals were too expensive to maintain 
so he just wrapped everything in plastic shrink-wrap and shut off the lights.

I rescued it all about 15 years ago and have been sending bits and pieces to 
various universities from time to time.

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Walt Doherty - RIP

[Gabe Goldberg]

Father of economics of sub-second response time; wonderful 
SHARE/mainframe/computing contributor.


http://hosting-11936.tributes.com/obituary/show/Walter-J.-Doherty-106121619

https://jlelliotton.blogspot.com/p/the-economic-value-of-rapid-response.html

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[SUSPECTED SPAM] IBM Systems Magazine - Jim Stefanik on His Unique Journey to IBM Image alt tag: Jim Stefanik

[Gabe Goldberg]

/Reg Harbeck talks with Jim Stefanik about how he went from setting up a 
mainframe in his parent’s garage, to working for IBM./


http://ibmsystemsmag.com/mainframe/trends/ztalk/jim-stefanik/

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How Programming Affects Your Brain: 3 Big Truths According to Science

[Gabe Goldberg]

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-programming-affects-brain/

Funny, didn't mention effects on brain of learning APL or assembler.

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The Beauty of the COBOL Programming Language - DevOps.com

[Gabe Goldberg]

https://devops.com/the-beauty-of-the-cobol-programming-language-v2/

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Destination z article: Mainframes Span the Globe

[Gabe Goldberg]

Mainframes Span the Globe
Clients share variations in worldwide IBM Z usage

Some brands seem ubiquitous worldwide: fast-food chains are one example. 
And though one might assume that the same cuisine is being served 24/7, 
somewhere/everywhere, a few individuals inexplicably want to verify that 
for themselves .


Similar same-everywhere thinking might be easy to apply to mainframes, 
though trying to log on to them all could be even harder than consuming 
the same food worldwide. But if you've ever eaten at a chain restaurant 
away from your home country, you likely noticed at least some regional 
menu variations.


Similarly, does location matter, or is "a mainframe a mainframe?"

http://destinationz.org/Mainframe-Solution/Trends/Mainframes-Span-the-Globe.aspx
https://tinyurl.com/y8mdz334

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Preliminary query about mainframe "environmentals"

[Gabe Goldberg]

I've seen occasional list mentions/discussions about mainframe 
environmentals (power, cooling, floorspace, weight, etc.). Obviously 
these requirements have changed -- declined -- over various machine 
generations, but maybe this is still interesting enough for a 
Destination z website article.


So this is a preliminary query to gauge how many responses I might get 
to specific questions about environmentals. (And don't be limited to 
aspects I've mentioned -- note others that come to mind).


There seem to be at least two facets here -- information available from 
IBM and elsewhere, and actual experiences.


If you might comment, please let me know -- and if you reply to the 
list, please copy me directly so responses aren't buried in list digests.


Responses now won't be for publication; this is just a survey/census to 
determine if an article on this topic will work. But when I ask specific 
questions, being able to quote and attribute responses will be best. But 
if necessary, comments can be anonymized.


Thanks.

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Destination z article: Reflecting on Technology Progress

[Gabe Goldberg]

Reflecting on Technology Progress
As IBM Z advances and evolves, varied skills are needed

http://www.destinationz.org/Mainframe-Solution/Trends/Reflecting-Technology-Progress
http://tinyurl.com/y9m9w8jc

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Fwd: Fw: Special Request from Len Santalucia, Chairperson of the Linux Foundation Open Mainframe Project

[Gabe Goldberg]

Forwarding here too, at Len's request. Reply as directed on survey -- 
not to me, just the messenger.



   From: Leonard Santalucia 
   
   To: "william.mun...@bbh.com" 
    
   Date: 08/11/2017 12:11 PM
   Subject: Special Request from Len Santalucia, Chairperson of the
   Linux Foundation Open Mainframe Project

   




   Bill, would you mind sending this out to your MVMUA email list please?
   +++

   Hi Folks, the Linux Foundation is conducting a brief online survey
   about *mainframe computing*. This confidential study is being
   conducted to understand current and planned usage of the mainframe.
 Through this study, we hope to generate the most comprehensive
   assessment of the mainframe industry – both where it is and where it
   is going.  If you would like to receive a summary of Key Findings
   from the study, simply indicate your desire to receive this summary
   report at the end of the survey. Please be assured that the study is
   being conducted for research purposes only; all information is
   *gathered anonymously*and will remain *strictly confidential*.

   To complete the survey, simply click on the link below, or copy and
   paste the link into your web browser. The survey should take you
   about 10 to 15 minutes to complete.
   https://v2.decipherinc.com/survey/selfserve/1f15/rco17004?list=1
   

   Thank you for your input and for taking the time to complete the survey!
   Regards, Len

   Leonard J. Santalucia
   CTO | Business Development Manager | Certified Specialist
   Vicom Infinity, Inc.
   IBM Premier Business Partner
   One Penn Plaza - Suite 2010
   New York, New York 10119
   Cell…….917-856-4493
   eFax413-622-1229
   vText……… 9178564...@vtext.com 
   General Blog http://www.infinite-blue.com/blog/
   

   Blockchain Blog http://blockchain.infinite-blue.com/
   

   Vicom Infinity http://www.vicominfinity.com
   

   Vicom Computer Services http://www.vicomnet.com/
   

   Infinity Systems http://www.infinite-blue.com
   




   *Chairperson*


   www.openmainframeproject.org
   



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Re: Researching Destination z article on non-US mainframes

[Gabe Goldberg]

I didn't have an answer in mind for the question. If the only differences are 
obvious ones between countries, I'll profile the different uses of mainframes 
you mention, since sometimes non-US installations don't get much US visibility. 
But if there ARE country- or region-based variations (staffing, functions, 
features, products, services, availabilities, whatever) those are of interest 
too.

Mostly joking, but for example, are different system colors available in 
different places? More seriously, you mentioned languages -- so how much 
documentation is available in various languages, vs. people using English 
materials worldwide? Similarly, how fluent are operating systems, other IBM 
products, and ISV offerings in various languages? Are there language issues? Or 
is English mostly used, same as commonly for Air Traffic Control.

Brian Westerman  said:

I have installed and supported mainframes all over the world, all over Europe, Africa, 
Asia, Australia, Middle East, South America, USA, and even in Iceland, Greenland and the 
South (and almost-north) Poles and I don't really understand the question I guess.  The 
installation and support is almost identical.  The users are obviously using them 
differently, but in general they are quite similar.  Were you expecting something 
"odd" with non-US mainframe users or sites?  Do they speak other languages, 
yes, does it matter to the mainframe, not really.  What differences are you looking for?  
I mostly see similarities, and maybe I'm just looking beyond differences to see them, but 
I probably need more information on what you're looking for to be able to respond better.

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Re: Researching Destination z article on non-US mainframes

[Gabe Goldberg]

Hi, Gord -- thanks for requesting clarification!

For this article, I'm interested in IBM mainframe usage outside the US. 
Canada is of interest whether or not mainframe experiences there are 
similar to US, included but not limited to issues dealing with IBM. If 
it's all similar to the US, I'll mention that and if it's different, 
I'll explore that.


Gord Tomlin <gt.ibm.li...@actionsoftware.com> said:

On 2017-08-08 15:37, Gabe Goldberg wrote:
> If you're running a non-US mainframe

Hi Gabe,

To clarify: do you mean an IBM mainframe that happens to be situated
outside the US, a mainframe (non-IBM) that originated outside the US, or
both?

Also, is Canada of interest to you? I think you would find the
experiences very similar to those of US users, other than those related
to dealing with IBM.

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Action Software International
(a division of Mazda Computer Corporation)
Tel: (905) 470-7113, Fax: (905) 470-6507

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Researching Destination z article on non-US mainframes

[Gabe Goldberg]

Here's a query I've sent to a few individuals, and I'll send a couple 
more to people outside US who I've seen post here or elsewhere. If 
you're running a non-US mainframe -- or have done so, or know people who 
have, or have thoughts on this -- and might chat a bit via email, please 
get in touch.


As usual, if you reply to the list, please copy me directly so your note 
isn't buried in the daily list digest.


Thanks!

 Forwarded Message 
Subject:Researching article on international mainframes
Date:   Tue, 8 Aug 2017 14:36:50 -0400
From:   Gabe Goldberg <g...@gabegold.com>
To: 



First, I have to call this "non-US use of mainframes" rather than 
"international", since to the rest of the world, the US is "international".


My point to editor proposing this article was that it's too easy to 
forget that US isn't only -- and maybe isn't main! -- user of mainframes.


I'd like to include brief non-US mainframe usage profiles plus comments 
on differences in mainframe applications/issues world-wide.


So I'll appreciate whatever you can provide...

 * Your thoughts on this
 * Suggestions of interesting non-US sites which might be willing to
   chat (via email) for brief profiles
 * Pointers to mainframe user groups around the world
 * Introduction to similar mainframe experts/advocates elsewhere
 * Noteworthy regional variations in mainframe usage/applications/issues

Thanks!

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In Silicon Valley, dropping in at the GooglePlex, tech museums and the Jobs garage

[Gabe Goldberg]

In Silicon Valley, dropping in at the GooglePlex, tech museums and the 
Jobs garage


By Renee Sklarew

Like my college-age daughters, I am in love with my iPhone. And my ardor 
increased while I was researching a guidebook. With my cellphone, I 
narrated each hike into the Notes app, used Google Maps when I got lost 
and the Camera app to capture scenery. As I worked, I wondered how we 
got from room-size mainframes to this portable computer-in-my-hand.


So when Southwest Airlines started offering daily nonstops from 
Baltimore-Washington International Marshall Airport to San Jose, I 
booked a trip with my husband, Eric. After an affordable 
transcontinental flight, we landed at Mineta San Jose International 
Airport, in the heart of Silicon Valley.


Without a personal invitation from an employee, you can’t enter the 
offices of Apple, Facebook or Google, but you can visit each campus on 
your own. We like taking tours, so we reserved with a company that 
provides personalized ones and explains how Silicon Valley came to be.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/travel/in-silicon-valley-dropping-in-at-the-googleplex-tech-museums-and-the-jobs-garage/2017/07/13/438c2674-6015-11e7-a4f7-af34fc1d9d39_story.html

---

First time I saw a technology I'd used -- Silent 700 terminal, I think! 
-- exhibited in a museum, I had definitely mixed feelings. Plenty more 
of our history is now on display as artifacts. Someday they might have a 
stuffed baby boomer system programmer on display.


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Re: Nice article about MF and Government

[Gabe Goldberg]

I have no dog in this fight -- never worked for government, never dealt 
with Compuware, don't remember problems with CA. Issues with other 
vendors, sure, as have been abundantly described here. Closest I came to 
gov work was 14 years at Mitre Corporation -- not-for-profit government 
research think tank, somewhat subject to gov procurement rules but 
independent corporation. And I'm sure not arguing with the various 
"voices of experience".


But I've profiled a couple gov agencies technology and I read 
http://www.govtech.com/ -- which highlights mostly good news (many 
interesting/innovative projects highlighted), though they also sure 
cover disasters and project failures. And half the time they're 
badmouthing legacy systems. I'm just noting that there's a spectrum of 
competence and quality in gov, same as elsewhere.


Edward Gould  said:

> On Jun 3, 2017, at 9:13 PM, zMan  wrote:
>
> What does that mean? Even a stopped clock is right twice a day and 
all that

> -- just because you don't like the source doesn't mean it makes sense to
> diss it unless you also disagree with it. Do you?
>
> On Sat, Jun 3, 2017 at 8:50 PM, Edward Gould >

> wrote:
>>
>> Thanks, unfortunately it was written by a person from Compuware. From my
>> prospective not a recommendation at all.

ZMan:
I disagree generally with the tone of the article and some specifics
1. A lot of Government IT facilities are in a state of neglect. By 
neglect, I mean than funding year after year after year has been cut. 
What is left is at best a wish mosh of equipment/software/man 
power/management.
2. Even bringing top “the Cloud” to me is a red herring and should be 
tossed in the dustbin.

3. There is no clear one size fits all.
4. Since 4 of the items I mentioned above have been so neglected that 
(the tax payer should be ashamed) .
5. I have been in several governmental data centers. Some of them are a 
disgrace and should be put out of their misery. Some are decent and only 
need some modernization. One of the DC's I visited had operators smoking 
and partly used boxed paper laying all over the place, in the computer 
room, the place was unbelievable.
6. I know I can’t speak for all of the cases but the ones I can either 
say get rid of or modernize the MF. The ones that PC’s can help are the 
smallish type DC’s.
7. Even *IF* done, the funding will not be reliable and the DC’s will 
fall back in disrepair in 5-7 years. The politicians will find a way to 
squeeze the well dry, once again.
8. There is no incentive for management to be either the BEST or at 
least better. This in turn leaves other three open items above to going 
down hill .
9. Working for the government in the past in most governmental DC’s has 
been a carreer limiting factor. That needs to be improved.
10. Some DC’s are so Civil Service oriented that in itself is self 
destructive.
Those are the high points. I don’t think the author has a good grasp on 
how governmental DC’s operate.


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Jean Sammet, Co-Designer of a Pioneering Computer Language, Dies at 89

[Gabe Goldberg]

Jean E. Sammet, an early software engineer and a designer of COBOL, a 
programming language that brought computing into the business 
mainstream, died on May 20 in Maryland. She was 89.


She lived in a retirement community in Silver Spring and died at a 
nearby hospital after a brief illness, said Elizabeth Conlisk, a 
spokeswoman for Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, where Ms. Sammet 
had earned her undergraduate degree and later endowed a professorship in 
computer science.


The programming language Ms. Sammet helped bring to life is now more 
than a half-century old, but billions of lines of COBOL code still run 
on the mainframe computers that underpin the work of corporations and 
government agencies around the world.


Ms. Sammet was a graduate student in mathematics when she first 
encountered a computer in 1949 at the University of Illinois at 
Urbana-Champaign. She wasn’t impressed.


“I thought of a computer as some obscene piece of hardware that I wanted 
nothing to do with,” Ms. Sammet recalled in an interview in 2000.


Her initial aversion was not unusual among the math purists of the time, 
long before computer science emerged as an academic discipline. Later, 
Ms. Sammet tried programming calculations onto cardboard punched cards, 
which were then fed into a computer.


“To my utter astonishment,” she said, “I loved it.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/04/technology/obituary-jean-sammet-software-designer-cobol.html

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Article -- Application Modernization: "Here We Go Again" -- a New z/OS Application Modernization Approach

[Gabe Goldberg]

http://ourdigitalmags.com/publication/?i=409066#{%22issue_id%22:409066,%22numpages%22:1,%22page%22:18}

Sigh -- overly elaborate URL and a magazine reader I dislike from which 
I can't copy a bit of text.


This is tidier: http://bit.ly/2qRt7vN

It's Enterprise Tech Journal, article by Phil Smith. Short version: It's 
about LzLabs' "software defined mainframe".


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Re: Looks like lots of folks in marketing said thanks but no thanks

[Gabe Goldberg]

It's amazing what technology can do: 
http://ericwhitacre.com/the-virtual-choir


https://www.ted.com/talks/eric_whitacre_a_virtual_choir_2_000_voices_strong

...not symphony, but still remote collaboration.

Timothy Sipples  quoted

Steve Smith who wrote:

> A symphony can hardly be performed with everyone working remotely

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IBM z/OS Systems Programmer Wanted -- Consultant / Contractor

[Gabe Goldberg]

I'm forwarding for colleague -- respond as requested below, not to me 
(but OK to copy me so I see this worked).


IBM z/OS Systems Programmer Wanted
Consultant / Contractor

Requires highly experienced systems programmer capable of performing all 
conceivable z/OS tasks such as maintaining IOCDS, generating IODF, 
applying software maintenance with SMP/E, installing program products 
from IBM and third-party vendors, configuring networking with VTAM and 
TCP/IP, defining/supporting SMS, and wrangling all features/subsystems 
encountered in a mainframe environment.  Work can usually be performed 
remotely via VPN.


Includes some short-term travel opportunities with premium pay for 
travel and additional incentives.


Bonus points for experience with:

Sysplex and Parallel Sysplex implementation
z/VM system support
DB2, IMS, CICS, MQ, WebSphere Application Server (WAS) system support

Reply to resu...@itconline.com

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Bridging the Distance: Remote system control, despite its complexity, is worth it

[Gabe Goldberg]

Bridging the Distance
Remote system control, despite its complexity, is worth it

Remote system programming used to mean using a keypunch machine outside 
the data center. But card decks still needed to get to the clunky 2540 
or equivalent unit record device. Maybe we had a key or door code to do 
this ourselves, or maybe we handed it to an operator. Then, 3270-style 
devices allowed for increased distance—and hike—to and from our systems. 
Finally, networked terminals and workstations made location irrelevant. 
Whether in an office or working from home, z Systems 
programmers/administrators can now work from the next office, building, 
city, time zone or continent.


But should this be happening? Do today's system programmers need 
physical access to data centers? Why or why not? Does being able to see 
and touch one's systems hold real value, or is it just a matter of 
professional pride? And to what extent is it practical to have a lack of 
immediacy to data centers, operations staff, users or matters?


http://destinationz.org/Mainframe-Solution/Business-Case/Bridging-the-Distance


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Query for Destination z article: How has system programming changed?

[Gabe Goldberg]

How has system programming changed over the mainframe's life? Over your
career? What did you do in the early days, what do you do now? Is it
still "system programming" or ... what?

Has traditional system programming become some/mostly/all system
administration?

Has how you divide time between tasks changed (administering systems,
developing system software and tools, coding applications, solving
problems in IBM/ISV/local code, evaluating/installing hardware/software
products, writing documentation, teaching, etc.)?

How have programming languages you use changed (from assembler, FORTRAN,
PL/I to today's moving-target language assortment)? Do you keep up with
languages or stick to the tried-and-true? If the latter, which
languages?

Don't be too backward focused; look forward: has it changed, does it
change, will it change because of technology evolution or individuals'
age/perspective/knowledge?

Is there a chicken/egg process: IBM detects a skill shortage so it
attempts to reduces skills required. Which, of course, reduces skills
available, which worsens the skills shortage. Have automation and
new/improved utilities reduced/changed your work? Deskilled it?

Have changes increased/decreased how interesting work is -- letting you
focus on challenging aspects, or made it more routine?

What's next; where will our profession be in five/ten years?

---

Please copy replies to me so they're not buried in list digest.

This is for publication -- with attribution/affiliation if possible. If
your affiliation isn't obvious from email address or sig, please supply
it. If you'd rather not be attributed/affiliated, that's OK -- just tell
me that in reply.

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Legacy code can cost you billions. Just ask an airline.

[Gabe Goldberg]

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/legacy-code-can-cost-you-billions-just-ask-airline-greg-leffler 



Wow.

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Re: Paper tape (was Re: Hidden Figures)

[Gabe Goldberg]

Great line from great (at least as I remember it) scifi book 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adolescence_of_P-1 -- after a gunfight 
in computer room, during which a certain device took a bullet, "That 
1052 had it coming".


Bill Godfrey  mentioned:

> IBM reference
> https://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/reference/glossary_1.html
>
> 1050 [2] The 1050 system consisted of the 1051 control unit, 1052
> printer-keyboard, 1053 printer, 1054 paper tape reader, 1055 paper tape
> punch and 1056 card reader. These various components were withdrawn from
> marketing between February 1974 and June 1978.


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Destination z article: IBM z/VM's Single System Image feature links systems

[Gabe Goldberg]

Seamless Computing
IBM z/VM's Single System Image feature links systems

If awards were given for vague and over-hyped technology terms, cloud 
computing could be a strong contender. Like the famous fragmented 
elephant description 
, its 
meaning and attributes depend on who's speaking, his or her background 
and experience and (too often) what’s being sold. Cloud computing's 
any/all of scalable technology, shared storage, easily provisioned 
compute images, seamless networking, failover reliability, outage-free 
maintenance and maybe more.


*VM Architectural Enhancement*

For a more down-to-earth implementation that plausibly satisfies those 
reasonable (and not mutually exclusive) requirements, consider z/VM's 
Single System Image (SSI) 
feature.http://www.destinationz.org/Mainframe-Solution/Systems-Administration/Seamless-Computing

http://tinyurl.com/zfz8zdd


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IBM Lays Out Plans to Hire 25,000 in U.S. Ahead of Trump Meeting

[Gabe Goldberg]

IBM Chief Executive Officer Ginni Rometty said she plans to hire about 
25,000 people in the U.S. and invest $1 billion over the next four 
years, laying out her vision for filling technology jobs in America on 
the eve of a meeting of industry leaders with President-elect Donald Trump.


To read the entire article, go to http://bloom.bg/2hq2LLG

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Query for Destination z article: remote system programming

[Gabe Goldberg]

Remote system programming used to mean using a keypunch machine outside 
the data center. Then 3270-style devices allowed increased potential 
distance -- and hike -- to and from mainframes. Finally, networked 
terminals, workstations, tablets, and smart phones made location 
irrelevant. Whether in an office or working from home, system 
programmers/administrators can now be in the next office, next building, 
next city, next time zone, next continent.


Or, can they? Is there good or bad news here? Whether or not they ever 
did, do today's system programmers need physical access to data canters? 
Why or why not? How far is it practical to be remote (from systems, 
colleagues, managers, everything) before distance from -- lack of 
immediacy to -- data center, operations staff, users, matters?


If you're doing remote support/admin, what are your tips regarding 
technologies to use, work practices, challenges, problems to solve, 
etc.? What connectivity is necessary, what equipment do you need (or 
wish for) at hand? Can you wrangle z/OS from a tablet or phone? What do 
you wish you'd known when you started providing remote support?


Please copy replies to me directly so they're not buried in list digest; 
I'd appreciate hearing back by Friday, December 16th.


I've collected some discussion about this from the lists so I'll likely 
query a few people directly.


Please include your name and affiliation so I needn't request it. And 
remember, this is for publication -- while I can likely paraphrase 
what's said if you'd rather be anonymous, for credibility, I'd much 
rather attribute statements.


Thanks!

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Re: LOOKAT gone? - Doc Buddy? Seriously?

[Gabe Goldberg]

Good luck embarrassing IBM anywhere, including (or especially) at 
shareholders meeting. During the 1980 OCO wars I was involved in 
industry efforts (it wasn't just SHARE/GUIDE, ADAPSO pushed too on 
behalf of software vendor members) fighting. I went to shareholders 
meeting and suggested to IBM Chairman (Akers then, I think) that OCO be 
reevaluated. He'd obviously been briefed in the issue because he was 
ready with all sorts of promises, e.g., that source would removed only 
when it was no longer necessary and abundant exits tailored to user 
requirements would help make source obsolete. At least on the VM side, 
at least for decades, that was utter rubbish.


Funny side note -- though OCO/source was a sore point with IBM for 
several years, I couldn't have wanted a better warm up act at the 
meeting before being called on; I was second. The first speaker 
harangued Akers about needing to unionize IBM. If there was anything 
LESS palatable for IBM than continuing to provide source code, it was 
unionization. So he was probably happy to hear from me.


Clark Morris wrote:

> On 2 Dec 2016 14:30:01 -0800, in bit.listserv.ibm-main
> dbc...@colesoft.com (David Cole) wrote:
>> Yep.
>> But Google does...
> If I were willing to spend the dollars to go to an IBM shareholders
> meeting, I would like to embarrass them abut this and the high
> reliability of the service web-site.


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Re: LOOKAT gone? - Compiler incest

[Gabe Goldberg]

Related, I think the VM community's wonderful Melinda Varian observed 
that the best software is developed by people (often individuals) who 
actually want to use it. On the VM side, that includes Mike Cowlishaw's 
REXX and John Hartmann's CMS Pipelines. I'm sure z/OS has many 
equivalent stellar tools/products/offerings.


And maybe related to the incestuous compiler compiling itself, from the 
1980's OCO wars, the SHARE button, "We want to be able to fix it in the 
language in which it broke".


David Cole  noted:

In contrast, a compiler coded in its own language tends to be much
> better, user friendly in features, than a compiler coded in any other 
language.


Interesting observation.

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Destination z article: Lessons Learned

[Gabe Goldberg]

Lessons Learned
More seasoned mainframers advise their younger selves and Generation Z 
workers

http://destinationz.org/Mainframe-Solution/Trends/Lessons-Learned
http://tinyurl.com/gpdrxbb

Time travel is a science fiction literature staple, from “Back to the 
Future” and “Terminator” film franchises back to works by Robert A. 
Heinlein and other classics. But there's always the paradox challenge: 
if someone travels back in time, they risk changing things so 
dramatically that they wouldn't exist in future time to go back to 
change things. One Heinlein story describes—and diagrams—relationships 
in the story “All You Zombies.” A Washington Post opinion piece 
describes time travel's history (in fiction, of course) and suggests 
that it's ultimately sought to provide immortality.


Though even z Systems can't provide actual temporal relocation, it's 
interesting to consider what advice mainframe professionals would give 
their younger selves if the opportunity existed. And veterans' wisdom 
applies to Generation Z. Best to receive it now, rather than in 30 years 
when someone else asks what advice they'd give to their younger selves


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IBM Jargon and General Computing Dictionary Tenth Edition

[Gabe Goldberg]

Worth a glance, if you've not seen this. Or a refresher if you have.

http://www.comlay.net/ibmjarg.pdf

It just showed up in a LinkedIn group -- not exactly hot off the press.

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Checklists Bring Order Out of Chaos and Enhance Reliability

[Gabe Goldberg]

Checklists Bring Order Out of Chaos and Enhance Reliability
Systematic procedures help avoid and solve problems

After spending a career with mainframes, I prefer order to chaos. I like 
the deterministic manner in which mainframe OSes are maintained (audit 
trails, full piece-part identification, systematic system builds, 
standardized maintenance tools, maintenance history, etc.) more than the 
free-fire frontier mentality for configuring, maintaining and debugging 
Windows PCs (plug-and-pray, installs which sprinkle random files 
everywhere, rebooting to ignore vanquish problems, etc.). Even logging 
changes to my PC, I feel at the mercy of the next software install which 
mysteriously corrupts a working system. But I take some comfort from 
detailed records and notes on how I've done things and set up systems so 
I can retrace my path.


In the same manner, when my wife prepares her favorite contribution to 
potluck events, rum cake, she follows a written recipe (see below). I've 
teased her about needing—or at least wanting—instructions, but I admire 
her process and see that it mirrors mine. I'm happy that the only 
variable between cakes is whether they include chocolate chips and nuts, 
with no risk of key ingredients forgotten.


http://destinationz.org/Mainframe-Solution/Trends/Checklists-Bring-Order-Out-of-Chaos-and-Enhance-Re
http://tinyurl.com/z7jlecx

...plus, Kim's rum cake recipe!

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Query for Destination z website: What advice would you give your former self?

[Gabe Goldberg]

Times change but lessons learned and insights gained can often 
timelessly apply equally to younger  generations. And we've all had 
moments of "If I'd only known then what I know now". So: What advice 
would you give your younger self, back then?


Might this include job/career options/choices, technology insights, work 
habits, geography, finances, or ...?


To what past age would you offer yourself advice? (within your working 
life, please)?


Did you receive advice that you ignored but that, in hindsight, you wish 
you'd followed, or at least better understood?


Is there advice you now wish you'd received "back then" which would NOT 
apply now?


For extra credit, describe how you'd have reacted to the advice you wish 
you'd received.


Remember, this isn't advice you'd give to anyone NOW, it's what you'd 
tell your long-ago younger self  about your job/career, technology, the 
industry, etc.


Please copy replies to me directly so they're not buried in list digest.

Please include your name and affiliation so I needn't request it. And 
remember, this is for publication --  though I can likely paraphrase 
what's said if you'd rather be anonymous.


Thanks.

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Paging Ed Gould

[Gabe Goldberg]

Ed -- please get in touch; I'd like to confirm for attribution comments 
you made for article I'm writing for Destination z website on 
checklists. And I need your affiliation (besides being on IBM-MAIN!).


Thanks,

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Destination z article: A Rewarding z/VSE Community

[Gabe Goldberg]

A Rewarding z/VSE Community
Fans focus on participation and knowledge sharing

http://destinationz.org/Mainframe-Solution/Trends/A-Rewarding-z-VSE-Community.aspx

http://tinyurl.com/he7wosp




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Query for Destination z article on using checklists in IT

[Gabe Goldberg]

The excellent and readable book "The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get 
Things Right"  (link below to avoid wrapping) illustrates -- using 
examples from medicine, aviation, and many other contexts -- great and 
pervasive value in applying structure, planning, discipline, and 
checklists to complex projects. Working with technology, we're more than 
familiar with lists of instructions for installing, maintaining, 
debugging, and repairing what we work with. For example, VM through many 
incarnations has used an IVP (Installation Verification Program) to 
exercise basic functions. Long ago in a VM data center, we added local 
functions to the test suite. Ensuring successful IVP operation at least 
reduces unpleasant surprises when systems entered production. And 
examples in the book from aviation and the military show how checklists 
and structured reports avoid problems, solve problems, and improve 
quality by identifying weak areas.


 -- the book

Many years ago when purchasing a new mainframe, we endured meetings with 
our IBM team called Systems Assurance. Tedious though they were, they 
paid off in ensuring that we bought the right configuration, properly 
prepared the data center facility, and understood the 
delivery/installation process. It was clearly based on years of 
experience with things going not quite right. So -- I'd like to hear 
about experiences using checklists for anything mainframe related (e.g., 
designing, developing, testing, debugging, documenting). Initially, 
being brief is fine; I'll follow up for details.


As usual, please copy me directly to avoid replies being buried in list 
digests. Thanks!


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Another Connor writeup

[Gabe Goldberg]

A Gen Z Mainframe Adventure
http://www.ibmsystemsmagmainframedigital.com/nxtbooks/ibmsystemsmag/mainframe_20160506/#/50
http://tinyurl.com/hqd57s3

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IBM Destination z - IBM z/TPF Excels at Transaction Processing

[Gabe Goldberg]

Mighty Mainframe OS
IBM z/TPF excels at transaction processing

For decades—essentially since birth of the IBM System/370 in the early 
1970s—mainframers have known and used the three primary members of the 
mainframe OS family: z/OS, z/VM and z/VSE.


Ask a hundred mainframers to name z Systems OSes and at least 99 of them 
might only mention those three. And seek the best solution for sustained 
mission-critical high-volume transaction processing against massive 
databases—the strategic foundation for leaders in many consumer and 
business serving industries—the answer will likely be z/OS running CICS 
or IMS, combined with middleware.


But simultaneously and quietly, as these systems evolved through 
multiple generations to current "z/" versions, another powerful 
environment was little known in the mainstream community, even though it 
was critical to multiple key industries and was used on, helped market 
and influenced evolution of the biggest of IBM's big iron.


That's the mainframe system software sibling: IBM z/Transaction 
Processing Facility (TPF).


http://destinationz.org/Mainframe-Solution/Business-Case/Mighty-Mainframe-OS
http://tinyurl.com/j83h7at

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Re: "IBM Layoff Epidemic Spreads Worldwide"

[Gabe Goldberg]

Point taken. As I responded on another list...

But remember, forwarding isn't necessarily endorsing either the article 
or comments. The political statements weren't mine; they were attached 
to the article. I included them specifically as examples of folly (there 
were other, germane comments), illustrating how people use/spin business 
news to push their own unrelated agendas. I obviously didn't make that 
clear, and should have either omitted the comments or made that point.


Regarding article itself -- same point about forwarding not being 
endorsing. But in VM, we live in the IBM universe. So it seems that 
major IBM news and even some speculation -- such as CEO changes, 
earnings, at least some acquisitions/divestitures, staffing trends -- 
are interesting and relevant (as others noted). Such articles are 
speculation, of course, because IBM doesn't reveal facts to report, so 
that's all that's possible to provide.


Anyway, as I said -- points taken regarding forwarding, especially 
comments from elsewhere.


Ken Hume <kph...@live.com> suggested, reasonably enough:

Please tell me which current IBM employees collaborated with the Nazis.

On 4/25/2016 1:52 PM, Gabe Goldberg wrote:
> "IBM Layoff Epidemic Spreads Worldwide"
>
> 
http://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-valley/at-work/tech-careers/ibm-layoff-epidemic-spreads-worldwide 


>
>
> Among the comments...
>
> Disgusting practice. I wouldn't expect any less from a company that
> helped the nazis
>
> It's all about the CEOs salary..vote For Trump and rescue the American
> worforce.

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"IBM Layoff Epidemic Spreads Worldwide"

[Gabe Goldberg]

"IBM Layoff Epidemic Spreads Worldwide"

http://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-valley/at-work/tech-careers/ibm-layoff-epidemic-spreads-worldwide

Among the comments...

Disgusting practice. I wouldn't expect any less from a company that 
helped the nazis


It's all about the CEOs salary..vote For Trump and rescue the American 
worforce.


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Re: z890 in my basement

[Gabe Goldberg]

Yay, Connor -- yes indeed, amazing guy. I enjoyed meeting him when he 
spoke at DC's Hillgang user group a while ago, then interviewing him for 
IBM Systems Magazine article which will be published one of these months.


Regarding giving kudos for facilitating his SHARE gig, there's also HPE 
for sponsoring him to attend.


Jesse 1 Robinson  said

And let's not overlook the role of IBM-Main in bringing this opportunity 
to light, nor of SHARE for scheduling this session in double-time--and 
for recording it for an even wider audience. Oh yeah, and kudos to 
Connor himself. ;-)


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Re: Microprocessor Optimization Primer

[Gabe Goldberg]

I'm behind reading this epic thread, but I sent a question related to it 
to Bill Collier, instructor I had at IBM in 1968 while in full-time 
training for OS/360 System Design Department. He runs 
http://www.mpdiag.com and is biographied at 
http://www.bestweb.net/~collier -- so is valuable resource on all-things 
multiprocessor:



Bill -- I shared this interesting document with some friends...

Communities category:Linux on System z Open Source
Ecosystem:Microprocessor ...

https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/forums/html/topic?id=5cf34211-c8e6-4747-a8c2-f8ff7379150b


...and for some reason we've gotten bogged down on this bit of
minutia, with one person asserting:

Interesting too was mention of "TEST AND SET", which in the 1960's,
was NOT an atomic instruction, and it caused multiprocessing
serialization problems in MVT/MP65 and from thence after, to be
replaced by "Compare and Swap", which WAS atomic.

But the PDF implied to me that now TS "Test and Set" WAS atomic.
Implied, anyhow.

A rewrite of history? A fix? Did I read it wrong?

---

My recollection is that TS was indeed atomic but wasn't adequate for
evolving requirements so was replaced by CS/CDS. There's plenty more
(too much!) in our discussion thread on TS but I think that snippet
suffices. I'll be grateful for any comments you have.


His interesting reply -- posted with permission, attribution requested; 
he's at coll...@acm.org --:


  No chance of getting a good night's sleep now.  Not with a
question to answer which brings back so many memories.

  The short answer.  Yes, Test and Set was atomic.  The trouble
was that as a tie breaker, it was not effective.  You could get
into Alphonse-Gaston situations where neither processor advanced.

  In order to provide a definitive answer, I tried to look up TS.
I have a 1964 copy of the System/360 Principles of Operation
manual.  The TS instruction is not mentioned.  Apparently it came
later.

  CS fixed the AG problem.  A processor might be repeatedly edged
out in the competition and so delayed indefinitely, but at least
other processors were competing successfully and therefore
advancing.

  Were there hardware problems I am not aware of?  Possibly.  If
you want to pursue the question, I could give you the names of
some other folks who were around at the dawn of time, and you
could ask them.

  Here is the long, interesting answer to your question which
dredges up so much fun stuff from the past.

  Was TS necessary?  Is CS necessary?  You can argue that they
weren't.  The most fascinating program I ever saw was Dijkstra's
1965 paper titled "Solution of a problem in concurrent programming
control."  Using just load, store, test, and branch instructions
(that is, no atomic instructions), the program performed a LOCK
function (that is, it allowed at most one program at a time into
a critical section of code) without the possibility of deadlock
(although livelock was still possible).

  In those days it was thought that multiprocessor machines should
be (what Leslie Lamport called) "sequentially consistent".  On an
SC machine the only answers a program could compute would be the
answers it could also compute on a uniprocessor machine.

  If you think about it for a decade or so, you realize that for a
machine to be SC, it must obey at least the following three rules.

  Rule 1.  Instructions are performed in the order defined by the
program.  No out of order execution can be visible.

  Rule 2.  No scoreboarding.  If processor 1 writes into operand A
at the same time that processor 2 reads from A, the value seen by
processor 2 must be either the old value of A or the new value of
A.  It is forbidden for the value to be some combination of bits
or bytes from the old value and the new value.  Similarly if both
processors write into A at the same time.

  This rule has been called "write atomicity".

  Rule 3.  If there are several copies of operand A scattered
throughout the caches of a system, then when processor 1 changes
the value of A, it must appear as if all copies of A change value
at the same instant.

  This rule has also been called "write atomicity".

  To distinguish the two, let's refer to them as "single copy
write atomicity" (SCWA) and "multiple copy write atomicity"
(MCWA).

  Back in those days we thought that it was obvious that
multiprocessors should be SC.  And that therefore they should
successfully execute programs such as Dijkstra's.

  Then reality intruded.  Engineers found that obeying the rules
greatly reduced performance and so came up with the following
argument:  programmers should not create programs which read and
write the same operand at the same time.  If two processes need to
access a shared operand, they should perform a lock operation
which will allow only one of them to proceed and to access the
operand while forcing the other process to wait for the first
process to finish.

  Today machines routinely violate the Rules.  Therefore, today's
machines 

IBM Systems Magazine article -- Learn by looking back

[Gabe Goldberg]

http://www.ibmsystemsmagmainframedigital.com/nxtbooks/ibmsystemsmag/mainframe_20160304/#/50

The Wayback Machine -- Archive.org -- remembers it all. Or at least a 
lot of it!


I don't like most online magazine viewers but it seems the only way to 
see this article.


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Mainframes Have a Long History of Accessibility -- With tools, IBM z Systems is inclusive to all

[Gabe Goldberg]

Mainframes Have a Long History of Accessibility --  with tools, IBM z 
Systems is inclusive to all


http://destinationz.org/Mainframe-Solution/Trends/Mainframes-Have-a-Long-History-of-Accessibility
http://tinyurl.com/hjtvcwp

Thanks to many folks who helped/suggested/contributed...

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Lineage of TPF

[Gabe Goldberg]

Indeed. Then a couple people responded. Good timing; I'm writing article 
on TPF for Destination z or IBM Systems Magazine (I forget where it'll 
be published). IBM TPFers have been very helpful and I'm contacting TPF 
users group: http://www.tpfug.org/ . I didn't post here because  
well, I just didn't, but I should have. Better late than never: I'm 
interested in TPF insights, experiences, etc.


Be brief, this won't be an epic article, though there might be follow-on 
pieces. Please copy me directly so replies aren't buried in the list digest.


Thanks...

Rick Troth said on IBM-Main: Lineage of TPF would also be interesting.

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Where do you place VSE?

[Gabe Goldberg]

One response cited Wikipedia entry. ALSO good timing; I'm ALSO writing 
article on VSE community.  As you'd expect, the VSE list has had a lot 
to say -- positive, negative, and informative.


I didn't post this query here because  well, I just didn't, but I 
should have. Better late than never: I'm interested in VSE COMMUNITY 
(not technical) insights, experiences, etc.


As usual, be brief, this also won't be an epic article.

Here's my query to VSE list:

Now I'm starting a piece for Dz on the VSE community. While I've never
run VSE (I'm mostly a VMer with some OS background) for decades I've
seen VSE and this community (in many ways similar to VM and its
community!) ride the ups and downs of IBM interest and support. Through
all that, VSE fans have remained steadfast, involved with and committed
to their platform of choice.

So I'd like to hear from list members on what the VSE community means to
you, how it's evolved, what you've contributed to and received from it,
how your IBM interactions have changed, major IBM and customer
contributors to recognize, past and current resources (WAVV, VM/VSE
Workshop, etc.) and how you think and hope it will evolve.

Please copy me directly so replies aren't buried in the list digest.
I'll work on this soon, so I'll appreciate quick comments. This isn't a
technical article. Rather, it's about what makes this a community vs.
just a bunch of people running the same operating system.

Thanks...

Rick Troth ALSO said on IBM-Main: Where do you place VSE? (since it's 
not one of "the big two")


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Fwd: Bloomberg: IBM's Third-Quarter Revenue Misses Estimates on Currency Impact

[Gabe Goldberg]

 Forwarded Message 
Subject: 	Bloomberg: IBM's Third-Quarter Revenue Misses Estimates on 
Currency Impact

Date:   Mon, 19 Oct 2015 17:17:43 -0400
From:   gabeg...@gmail.com
To: Gabe Goldberg <g...@gabegold.com>



From Bloomberg, Oct 19, 2015, 16:11:56

IBM lowered its full-year profit forecast and reported a 14th straight 
quarter of declining revenue, reflecting the computer maker’s struggle 
to reignite growth in all of its major business units while currency 
fluctuations erode sales.


To read the entire article, go to http://bloom.bg/1M2rkbH




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Destination z article: Best System Programmer Attributes

[Gabe Goldberg]

Best System Programmer Attributes
Mainframers give advice and lessons learned on what helps in the real world

http://destinationz.org/Mainframe-Solution/Trends/Best-System-Programmer-Attributes

...thanks to those who responded and chatted!

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web: The Inevitable Return of COBOL

[Gabe Goldberg]

It's only a matter of time until the Common Business Oriented Language 
(COBOL) will regain its spotlight as one of the most in-demand skills of 
future generations of software engineers. We can just see it now: 
Programmers of the future will hop out of their driverless cars, walk 
into their offices and sit down to start coding in 1959's COBOL.


It sounds crazy, considering COBOL is the furthest thing from most all 
engineers' minds today. It ranks fairly low in the Tiobe Index, a 
measurement of today's most popular programming languages. Many newer, 
speedier languages give today's coders little reason not to scoff at the 
antiquated COBOL. The most telling evidence of COBOL's irrelevancy is 
that about 70% of universities said they don't even include COBOL in 
their computer science curriculum anymore, according to a recent survey. 
It's logical. Why waste curriculum space for a skill that employers 
don't even look for these days? A quick search for COBOL programmer on 
any job site, for instance, yields a few hundred job postings while the 
more popular Java programmer yields thousands.


Based on these facts alone, COBOL appears to be nearly extinct. You 
might even wonder why we're writing about COBOL at all? But looks can be 
deceiving. COBOL is a mysterious paradox. Born in another era, COBOL 
lives on as the quiet but important pillar on which the majority of 
businesses stand today. In a field that evolves at an unprecedented 
speed, younger generations may be overlooking a critical skill of the 
future.


http://blog.hackerrank.com/the-inevitable-return-of-cobol/

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web: IBM is struggling. But former CEO Sam Palmisano says he isn’t looking back. ...

[Gabe Goldberg]

Sums it up: You're there primarily to drive financial results. We could 
argue the good or the bad of that—that's a nice intellectual 
discussion—but you're measured by your owners, the shareholders, and 
they expect financial performance.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-leadership/wp/2015/06/26/ibm-is-struggling-but-former-ceo-sam-palmisano-says-he-isnt-looking-back/

And...

Q. What was the hardest part of leading a public company?
A. Not falling in love with yourself.

(That's out of context -- the answer continues -- but still.)

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Query for Destination z article -- sysprog attributes

[Gabe Goldberg]

What attributes do system programmers absolutely need? Which are nice to 
have? Are there kiss-of-death traits for system programmers? Attributes 
can be skills, instincts, knowledge, etc. What's critical, what works, 
what doesn't matter, what's best never shown or seen? Perhaps at least 
as important, which attributes are innate and which can be learned (or, 
when necessary, unlearned)? Do these vary across different systems 
supported/maintained/developed?


Thanks.

As usual, please copy replies to me directly so they're not buried in 
list digests.


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Destination z: Turn Experiences Into Wisdom -- Testing, planning and sharing with others

[Gabe Goldberg]

Turn Experiences Into Wisdom -- Testing, planning and sharing with others

http://www.destinationz.org/Mainframe-Solution/Trends/Turn-Experiences-Into-Wisdom.aspx
http://tinyurl.com/ns8rejf

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Destination z: Use Career Resources to Grow

[Gabe Goldberg]

Use Career Resources to Grow -- many different places to better yourself 
and find like-minded individuals


http://www.destinationz.org/Mainframe-Solution/Business-Case/Using-Career-Resources-to-Grow
http://tinyurl.com/o9yufu9

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Query for Destination z -- mainframe accessibility

[Gabe Goldberg]

Over the years, IBM's done great work making technology accessible -- 
that is, reducing effects and limitations of diminished hearing, sight, 
mobility, etc. In the past, I've seen fat IBM handbooks describing 
platform-specific accessible technology -- though not lately.


But given ongoing research/development plus ADA requirements for 
reasonable accommodation, I suspect this is still an active area.


The difference is likely that modern platforms are accessed by the same 
universal devices -- smartphones, tablets, workstations, PCs, Macs, 
whatever. (Keypunches and coax-connected 3270 terminals, not so much.) 
So that's where accessibility would be provided, at network edges.


What's out there? What have you seen/used? I'll appreciate hearing 
real-life experiences about using mainframes with any 
hardware/software/network/etc. tools to overcome access limitations, 
along with pointers to tools.


Thanks -- and as always, please copy replies to me directly so they're 
not buried in list digests.


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web: Buffett Adds to IBM Stake as Rometty Shifts Big Blue to Cloud - Bloomberg B ...

[Gabe Goldberg]

Someone still has hope ... or faith.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-17/buffett-adds-to-ibm-stake-as-rometty-shifts-big-blue-to-cloud

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Re: Query for Dz article -- mainframe problem notification systems

[Gabe Goldberg]

I should know better than to send a query over the holidays. I only 
received a few responses to this but figure it's more widely applicable 
than that. So -- chime in, please?


On 12/28/2014 16:16, Gabe Goldberg wrote:
How do you learn about mainframe system problems while they're 
happening? Using standard facilities, add-on products, home-grown 
tools, hybrid systems blending technologies? Have you built your own 
(early) warning system? Have these tools averted disasters? Missed 
disasters? Lessons learned, wish lists? Challenges tuning such systems 
to trigger on real problems but avoid false alarms? Etc. Specifics are 
more valuable than generalities, though I'd also like basic principles.


Brief reading on this -- http://blog.strom.com/wp/?p=4569

As always, please copy replies to me directly to avoid them being 
buried on list digests. Especially do that if you read lists on mirror 
sites -- sometimes posting there doesn't reach the main list.


Thanks...




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Query for Dz article -- mainframe problem notification systems

[Gabe Goldberg]

How do you learn about mainframe system problems while they're 
happening? Using standard facilities, add-on products, home-grown tools, 
hybrid systems blending technologies? Have you built your own (early) 
warning system? Have these tools averted disasters? Missed disasters? 
Lessons learned, wish lists? Challenges tuning such systems to trigger 
on real problems but avoid false alarms? Etc. Specifics are more 
valuable than generalities, though I'd also like basic principles.


Brief reading on this -- http://blog.strom.com/wp/?p=4569

As always, please copy replies to me directly to avoid them being buried 
on list digests. Especially do that if you read lists on mirror sites -- 
sometimes posting there doesn't reach the main list.


Thanks...

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Query for Destination z: Underutilized resources

[Gabe Goldberg]

I've worked with mainframes and then other technologies for a long time 
-- and have always sought communities relevant to whatever technology 
niche I was in. By communities I mean people, companies, organizations 
-- anyone with whom I shared interest in some broad-or-narrow technology 
(mainframes, VM, computer security, medical IT, Windows, email, consumer 
technology, telematics, etc.).


And I've always known people who, for whatever reason, didn't avail 
themselves of such resources. Which seemed to me to be willfully flying 
blind, rather than sharing/receiving anything/everything that would make 
their jobs easier.


So, for Destination z -- what community resources should others take 
advantage of, participate in, contribute to, benefit from, collaborate 
with, etc.?


I'm more interested in off-beaten-path pointers but would also like 
stories on how people benefit from mainstream resources (e.g., SHARE, 
NaSPA, Destination z, IBM Systems Magazine, publications from 
http://enterprisesystemsmedia.com/, VM Workshop, WAVV, IBM conferences, 
local user groups, discussion lists, LinkedIn groups).


What's missing from my list? What are your favorites? Why; how have they 
helped you? How did you find them? What niche/specialized resources need 
more visibility/participation?


As usual, please be (relatively) brief -- I'll query for additional 
information. And copy replies to me directly to avoid info being trapped 
in list digests.


Thanks...

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Mainframe Work, Then and Now

[Gabe Goldberg]

Mainframe Work, Then and Now -- The issues and transitions mainframers 
faced in the past help us improve today


It's all too easy as mainframers to answer What's new? with Not 
much. Or to gripe about the latest bug encountered or fixed, or look 
forward to installing the (supposedly) latest-and-greatest 
just-announced whatever from IBM or an ISV.


But taking a longer view is interesting, remembering back five or 20 
years or more, focusing on how it's not just technology that's changed, 
and also the very nature of our work. Today's processors, memory, 
storage capacities and networks couldn't have been imagined in the early 
days; paraphrasing a well-known but bogus industry saying, 24-bit 
addressing was thought to be enough for anybody. And it was, for a 
while. (Now, of course, we take for granted 64-bit technology, a growing 
array of opcodes and a massive Principles of Operation that would 
astonish early mainframers.) Similarly, punch card input and greenbar 
printed output (and system dumps!) made the world—and the 1403 print 
train—spin, for a while.


http://www.destinationz.org/Mainframe-Solution/Trends/Mainframe-Work--Then-and-Now 



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Destination z articles -- moving a data center (two parts)

[Gabe Goldberg]

I previously sent first article, not second. Here are both parts...

Planning for Data Center Move Is Critical
Clearly defining steps and outcome before a move, upgrade or build helps 
ensure a smooth transition to success

http://www.destinationz.org/Mainframe-Solution/Systems-Administration/Planning-for-Data-Center-Move-Is-Critical
http://tinyurl.com/lfg7rnt

Flexibility Needed During Execution of Data Center Move
Having backup plans and defined roles makes the move easier when 
surprises arise

http://www.destinationz.org/Mainframe-Solution/Systems-Administration/Flexibility-Needed-During-Execution-of-Data-Center
http://tinyurl.com/pdcea79

Thanks to people who answered the query for this...

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Query for Destination z article: mistakes -- teachable/learnable moments

[Gabe Goldberg]

There are at least a bazillion (Google tells me) quotes about mistakes.

So go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because that's where 
you will find success. On the far side of failure. Thomas J. Watson, Sr.


It is much easier to be critical than to be correct. Benjamin Disraeli

Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new. 
Albert Einstein


Anyone who's ever accomplished anything -- done anything -- has made 
mistakes. What have your mainframe career mistakes, teachable/learnable 
moments, painful learning experiences, hard-knocks lessons, etc., been? 
What errors have you seen or heard (and believed!) others make? What 
were the consequences and, most important, what did you learn?


These might be technical or job/career related. What would you go back 
and tell your younger self to do or not do? To do differently? What 
mistakes would you help others avoid?


Please be (relatively) brief; if I need more information, I'll ask. And 
please copy me directly so replies aren't buried in list digests.


Thanks...

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Destination z article query: mainframe work changed/changing?

[Gabe Goldberg]

For Destination z, I'm writing about how mainframe work has changed -- 
/especially /with with tips and what might be in the future and how to 
stay ahead.


In the that was then category, there's all this...

 * I learned to program a keypunch drum control card my first day
   working at IBM
 * We all worked night shifts for machine time
 * We had massively heavy printed system dumps
 * We had bookshelves full of manuals needing too-frequent updates via TNL
 * Companies had on-site and frequently visiting sales and support IBMers
 * We fought religious wars between VMers/MVSers
 * We loved full source code (for VM, at least)
 * I had a manager who'd been a very good system programmer
 * Mostly or entirely blue (IBM) installations were common
 * We suffered with primitive and creaky-slow dial access
 * Users fought for space in terminal rooms vs. today's
   anywhere/everywhere personal terminals/PCs/BYOD
 * Centralized staff vs. dispersed teleworkers
 * Informal or no change control
 * A few mainstream programming languages


...which has all changed mostly for the better (but, ah, source code, I 
remember it well). Mid-career came FAX machines (but who would we use 
that with?), and later came the Internet, smartphones/tablets. Under 
this is now we have BYOD, social media, and Donald Trump turning DC's 
beautiful/historic Old Post Office into a hotel. No wait, save that last 
one for griping elsewhere.


So -- other examples? What's new and what's coming in mainframe work? Is 
it getting better or worse? How do you (do you?) keep up or even stay 
ahead?


For this article, I'm focusing on work, not that-was-then and 
this-is-now technology changes (3.g., running half-meg memory 
mainframes  with 35/100/200 MB DASD, etc.)


As usual, be brief -- I'll ask for details. Copy directly to me to avoid 
replies buried in digests, etc.


Thanks!

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