Folks, I find it interesting that people are still talking about the various levels of difficulty in managing and coding JCL. Curtis, you are absolutely right, JCL is not a true language, but it is something that each individual has their own nuances with. Having said this, there are a number of tools on the market for managing JCL and a couple that can actually manipulate and create JCL. I have been in the JCL automation tool market space for 30 years and I can say unequivocally that I am shocked at the number of shops that have no JCL tool, an older JCL tool that just provides the basics, or a tool that can do some things, but not everything.
I am available to talk with anyone offline from this discussion of you want to know more. Regards, Mitch McCluhan, Legacy Modernization Consultant www.lcmg.us -----Original Message----- From: Pew, Curtis G <[email protected]> To: IBM-MAIN <[email protected]> Sent: Wed, Nov 6, 2013 8:15 am Subject: JCL (was: Re: Aging Sysprogs = Aging Farmers) On Nov 6, 2013, at 8:45 AM, David Crayford <[email protected]> wrote: > Hey, how do I do a loop in this code? Forget it kid, they didn't have rewind on punch card readers. I think much of the disdain for JCL comes from inaccurate expectations set by alling it a “language”. JCL is *not a programming language*. It’s not even a inimal scripting language. It’s the punch-card-technology equivalent of estures like double-clicking an app icon or selecting “open” from a file menu n a modern GUI. Yes, it’s far from perfect. The condition code thing is pretty goofy (although ou’ve been able to use IF constructs instead for over two decades) and a lot of eywords and values are pretty obscure. But for what it was actually designed to o, it works pretty well. -- urtis Pew ([email protected]) TS Systems Core he University of Texas at Austin ---------------------------------------------------------------------- or IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, end email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
