[GTALUG] IBM Mainframe and z/OS

Sat Dec 9 08:10:45 EST 2017

On Dec 4, 2017 5:35 PM, "Steve Petrie, P.Eng. via talk" <talk at gtalug.org> 
wrote:

*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.

You must mean "Amazing Grace" Hopper. It's true she was in the wartime Naval Reserve, but prior to that she was a graduate of Yale and elsewhere in mathematics. Probably one of the most dedicated and inspired women of the traditional working man world of the day. 

Anecdotally, she was responsible for one very large hardware purchase for the Navy department. The hardware in question; bug screens for Windows .. ummm not the Microsoft kind. 

IIRC here's the quote from https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper

While she was working on a Mark II Computer at a US Navy research lab in Dahlgren, Virginia in 1947, her associates discovered a moth that was stuck in a relay; the moth impeded the operation of the relay. While neither Hopper nor her crew mentioned the phrase "debugging" in their logs, the case was held as an instance of literal "debugging." For many years, the term bug had been in use in engineering.[35][36] The remains of the moth can be found in the group's log book at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.

I think I read the exact stuff about the screen purchase in someone else's wartime memoir but the wiki covers her astounding career accomplishments in good detail. Her compiler, her proposed English language program which became COBOL and the proposition of distributed networks of small computers. All very hard sells at the time of the mindset of, computers do arithmetic. 

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.

* * *
* * *

*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 *...*

It's true there is a purpose for blinkered code in proprietary environments. Converting digigraphs and trigraphs back and forth is a kind of security by obscurity, but I kind of like the programmers sense of humor about it.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBCDIC

Professor: "So the American government went to IBM to come up with an encryption standard, and they came up with—"

Student: "EBCDIC!"

Regards,,

*Steve*

** * **

Steve Petrie, P.Eng*.*

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

*From:* R360 Design INC via talk <talk at gtalug.org> 
*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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Cheers,

-- 
Russell