Congratulations on your retirement - thank you for insights you have shared on this list. Your contributions to HLASM are well appreciated by all of us who have benefited from a world class product. Enjoy your retirement!
Regards, Kerry Liles On Wed, Feb 5, 2025, 3:31 PM Jonathan Scott <jonathan.scott...@gmail.com> wrote: > Today, 5th February 2025, was my last day with IBM, where I was HLASM and > Toolkit Development and Support Team Leader. > > > > I’ve been working in Assembler for over 51 years, since January 1974 (when > I > was a pre-university student with IBM). After working with Altergo > Software > in London and then at the Gothenburg Universities Computing centre (GUC) in > Sweden (also known in Swedish as Göteborgs Datacentral, GD), I returned to > IBM in September 1987, where I’ve been for over 37 years, working on CICS, > MQ and (among other things) HLASM, programming in Assembler and IBM’s PL/X, > and writing tools using REXX and CMS/TSO Pipelines. I also had the > privilege of working with Dr John Ehrman in various discussions about HLASM > design and later helping him to support legacy products such as the VS > Fortran compiler, while he was putting together his Assembler text. > > > > I was appointed as HLASM team leader in June 2017, and as an advanced user > of Assembler, I was pleased to be able to implement various HLASM > enhancements, including: > > > > * Enhancements to AINSERT and lookahead to improve the usability of > AINSERT and support the use of sequence symbols in the inserted code > * Capability to generate ELF64 for Linux, optionally via GOFF (to > support long external names) > * Capability to execute the assembler natively under 64-bit Linux > * USING addressability limits which apply both to short and long > displacements > * DROP by address, which can drop a dependent USING > * Negative decimal self-defining terms > * ASCII and Unicode self-defining terms > * Flexible code page support, with control of EBCDIC to ASCII > conversion and UTF-8 constants, for example for EBCDIC accented characters > > > > I expect those who follow this list can think of some other things we have > fixed or improved over the years, often in response to excellent > suggestions > on this list! > > > > I’m now looking forward to having more time to play instrumental music > (piano, violin and viola) and resume my long-interrupted study of > theoretical physics. However, I’m still interested in assembler and I > intend to continue to follow this list and respond when I can, although I > no > longer have access to any IBM internal resources so I can’t test my guesses > before replying as I have done in the past. > > > > The IBM HLASM and Toolkit team is now being led by Ramesh Padmanabha (in > Canada – this is a somewhat geographically dispersed team), who also > follows > this list (as do various other IBMers). They still have a long list of > requirements and suggestions, many of which have already been at least > partly prototyped, so I hope to see further useful enhancements in the > future. > > > > Jonathan Scott > > (near Hursley, UK) > > > > > > >
