Comments on: Someday, computers will only be the size of a football field.

Someday, computers will only be the size of a football field.

Captain_Tenille — Wed, 24 Nov 2004 12:07:59 -0800

Hercules! Not the shiny muscle man from the past, but a handy emulator for IBM S/360, S/370, S/390, and z/Arch mainframes. Unfortunately, because of IBM's bullheadedness, you can only run operating systems released when the world was young, unless, for whatever reason, you decide to run something released after the Reagan Administration. You, too, can learn how easy we young whippersnappers have it now, but beware: to effectively use most of these systems, you will need to descend into Hell.

By: dolface

dolface — Wed, 24 Nov 2004 14:04:52 -0800

you know, that link to the jcl manual was just cruel, i'd almost managed to forget that jcl existed. now i'm going to be twitching and whimpering in horror for the rest of the day

By: purephase

purephase — Wed, 24 Nov 2004 14:08:51 -0800

Ugh. Until I came to my senses, my prior job required me to switch between JCL and PHP (for different application support). Talk about old vs. new. Unfortunately, as much as I'd like to believe that JCL is no longer relevant... it's not true. Most banks, educational institutions, and government still rely heavily on mainframe services. Worst programming experience ever.

By: Captain_Tenille

Captain_Tenille — Wed, 24 Nov 2004 14:10:11 -0800

So you're saying that I should have put a (NWSF) after the JCL link? //HOTTEENS JOB CLASS=A,MSGCLASS=A,MSGLEVEL=(1,1)

By: sleslie

sleslie — Wed, 24 Nov 2004 14:41:51 -0800

I've written a JCL migration application... in REXX.

By: majick

majick — Wed, 24 Nov 2004 17:58:29 -0800

Hey, REXX is alive and well. Well. Um. Undead.

By: rfs

rfs — Wed, 24 Nov 2004 18:44:30 -0800

I still use SPF/PC as an editor - mainly for the nostalgia for TSO.

By: JeffL

JeffL — Wed, 24 Nov 2004 19:31:14 -0800

Purephase, I feel your pain. Several years ago when I worked at what was primarily a mainframe shop, I developed a "JCL Cross Reference" app - COBOL program on the mainframe scanned the dataset containing the JCL, created a (huge) flat file that a batch job downloaded to an IIS web server every night. The client app was an ActiveX control written in Visual Basic and C that processed the mammoth file. The mainframe programmers would go the site on our intranet, and do all their searching, etc. with the web app - it was MUCH faster than their previous method of submitting a batch job from ISPF/PDF to scan the library. It was "interesting" using such a mixture of tools/languages. I was the only person on the staff who worked in "both worlds" - I was always struck by how little understanding both camps really had for what the "other guys" actually did.

By: JeffL

JeffL — Wed, 24 Nov 2004 19:40:13 -0800

REXX? I *WISH* I could've used REXX. We had to use the dreaded CLIST , *shudder*. See here for a comparison. This quote pretty much says it all: CLIST programs often tax the poor programmer's analytical capabilities as he or she tries to understand how CLIST attempts to interpret data strings as expressions and then tries valiantly to prevent it from doing so. CLIST language is the incarnation of obscurity.

By: davem

davem — Thu, 25 Nov 2004 05:28:41 -0800

What? No 5100 emulator? How is John Titor going to complete his mission?

By: Mitheral

Mitheral — Thu, 25 Nov 2004 09:00:15 -0800

Hmm, I actually liked the year I spent doing MVS/JCL programming. Still have my keyboard from a 3270 terminal with the double row of functions keys and both enter and return keys. Always loved working with a mainframe, it is so orderly. REXX wasn't so bad, just kind of limited. Now RPG, there was a language that would get you wishing for the end of time.