[GTALUG] IBM Mainframe and z/OS

Mon Dec 4 17:35:15 EST 2017

Greetings To R360,

>From someone who worked as independent contract software engineer for 30 years, retiring early in the year 2002.

At that time major financial companies used large IBM mainframes extensively. They simply wouldn't trust anything else.

The COBOL language often so disparaged by folks coming ftom the *nix world, was the robust application language backbone of much custom app code on IBM big iron.

The IBM mainframes I worked in COBOL on had their own IBM proprietary operating systerms (e.g. MVS - multiple virtual systems). All was rock solid and performant. I did work for two large insurance companies. At one, the language was COBOL running on IBM's AIX *nix flavour on an IBM (RS-6000?)  But as I understand, this COBOL application I worked on was was later migrated intact to an IBM mainframe running IBM's proprietary MVS OS

The COBOL language has features making it a robust tool in the hands of "bricklayers" (programmers of varied skill and enthusiasm). The female U.S. Navy officer who invented COBOL knew what she was doing.

I expect that there is still a large COBOL application code base (representing a large $ investment) in operation at these big companies. COBOL is a possible career path for someone young but who is also unafraid of jeers frm ignorant programmers from the net / *nix world.

The old guard like me are all retired / ing in droves, and not enough new COBOL progammers are being produced by colleges and universities. There were (are?) some really great COBOL implementations out there. The name Micro Focus comes to mind. The MF COBOL on my Win XP PC proved to be rock solid and incredibly fast with a great debugger.

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You should research all this before making any commitment to a particular OS or application language.

The advantage of starting your career with a big company (e.g. bank, insurance) is that they can manage their staff with a long-term view. They will invest in training you, and they provide a populaiton of competent staff to mentor you. I worked with many different programming languages over the years, and likely you will also. They are all just tools.

Maybe that proprietary IBM OS layer I worked with has now all disappeared. But it would surprise mte to learn that our big banks are running their "inner jewels" type IT operations on open source LInux ...

Regards,,

Steve

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Steve Petrie, P.Eng.

Oakville, Ontario, Canada
(905) 847-3253
apetrie at aspetrie.net

----- Original Message ----- 
  From: R360 Design INC via talk 
  To: talk at gtalug.org 
  Sent: Sunday, December 03, 2017 10:33 PM
  Subject: [GTALUG] IBM Mainframe and z/OS

  Hello everyone,

  Does anyone know how I could gain hands-on experience on an IBM mainframe? This is a career path Id like to pursue - i.e. Websphere zOS consultant or CICS. I am currently a UoT student and was wondering how people  gain experience

  -- 
  r360design.ca

  -- 
  r360design.ca

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