z/OMG

by dmoney on 11/5/2009, 2:17 AM with 33 comments
  • by tsally on 11/5/2009, 5:12 AM

    The same author wrote a really great piece on gay marriage from a database engineering perspective: http://qntm.org/?gay

  • by mrlebowski on 11/5/2009, 6:16 AM

    The author paints too grim a picture of mainframes. Isn't legacy code supposed to be that way? As far as I know, not many new code projects are being done on mainframes. But whatever is there, has to be maintained/upgraded. Mainframes are NOT as difficult to use as the author says. They power most of the big life/general insurance companies, and they do interface well with front-ends [with XSLs in middle to convert from/to string streams]. I have worked for two years on mainframes, and loved the simple editor. Like with any command-line type editor, it has its quirks, but once you learn it, it is very fast. Also, z/OS has some version control systems (Endevour), and really good debuggers.

  • by nrr on 11/5/2009, 4:47 AM

    This account right here makes me want to be a mainframe programmer for a living.

    Writing software for microcomputers that sells is for chumps. Mainframes are where it's at, if for no other reason than the fact that "relabel[ing] one line of [a] procedure between one software version and the next will break somebody else's program."

  • by djehuty on 11/5/2009, 8:21 AM

    I get the impression that moving away from COBOL, "Big Iron", and such dinosaurs has, after the initial wrench, made companies more productive. All of which makes me wonder what part the army of salesmen that go with these things play in their continued existence. (And the executive-ego-stroke of having an impressive room dominated by a bond-villianesque monolith.)

  • by cturner on 11/5/2009, 7:14 AM

    I like this guy's witty banter, and his substitution of acronyms. But I particularly like this:

        ICBM System z is the Stonehenge of computing platforms.
    You go to the wiki page and look at the picture of the system and think "I can actually imagine a circle of these systems being set up and seeming very very much like stonehenge".

  • by baxter on 11/5/2009, 10:43 AM

    A couple of years ago I spent just over a year working as a mainframe developer on a System/360 set of mainframes and the author's description of mainframe development seems accurate.

    I grew very fond of JCL, EBCDIC and the text editor despite, or perhaps due to, their idiosyncrasies. Not that I would ever go back ;)

  • by ahlatimer on 11/5/2009, 7:23 AM

    Reminds me of working on HP's MPE OS (I believe I was using an HP 3000) in COBOL to keep a couponing system up and running. I won't say it was a terrible experience, but I certainly wasn't a fan of MPE or COBOL by the time I left.

  • by seldo on 11/5/2009, 4:05 AM

    The thing that struck me about his awestruck description of the awfulness of System Z and its editor was "hey, that sounds a lot like vi".

    I heart my graphical IDE.

  • by rman666 on 11/5/2009, 12:09 PM

    Nice clean blog pages. I don't care as much for the home page, but the individual article pages are easy on the eyes.

  • by Tichy on 11/5/2009, 10:38 AM

    What are these things used for? Why can't they ever go away? I don't really believe it...