I agree. I'm not knocking ISPF! I use it a lot, mainly SDSF as I use GUI
editors. The rest of the time I spend in a UNIX terminal shell using a
CLI. For a lot of tasks ISPF is the best tool for the job.
BTW, calling a mainframer a dinosaur is not commonly considered an insult ;)
On 2020-03-30 10:36 AM, Seymour J Metz wrote:
Not all change is progress. I like to be an early adopter, but if the latest thing on the
block is garbage then call me a dynosaur - I won't use it voluntarily. If an old language
or old tool suits my needs, I won't drop it just because it's out of fashion. ISPF have
flaws, but they also have strengths; I will continue to use them when it makes sense to
do so. Amusingly enough, some of the "modern" software that I'm supposed to put
up with is itself pretty long in the tooth.
Note; I don't like Perl syntax, but I use it anyway - because it offers me
enough that I'm willing to put up with it.
--
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz
http://mason.gmu.edu/~smetz3
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From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] on behalf of
David Crayford [dcrayf...@gmail.com]
Sent: Sunday, March 29, 2020 10:08 PM
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: strange python announcement
On 2020-03-30 2:43 AM, Charles Mills wrote:
There's no advantage to REXX anymore, as fine a language as it is.
is not entirely true, right? Three advantages of Rexx would be native support
of EBCDIC, native support of xSAM, and straightforward invocation from TSO?
Right?
Again, not trying to pick a fight, just trying to understand.
Here's my motivation: I am trying to avoid dinosaurization. I am trying to answer the
questions "am I being an old fuddy-duddy for sticking with Rexx over Python? Should
I make an effort to embrace Python for the tasks where I now tend to turn to Rexx?"
Take the dinosaur test. Do you use Git?
And it sounds like the answer is No. Whatever dinosaurism I exhibit is in
sticking with TSO and ISPF, not in sticking with Rexx. (For what it's worth,
when I speak with customer personnel, 100% of them, to a man or woman, seems to
assume the computer world revolves around TSO for sysprogs and batch for
production -- so it makes sense for me to be most conversant with those
environments.)
Is that a stereotype? I see a lot of young people working on mainframes
(boths sysprogs and applications guys) who use modern tooling. The
editor of choice is vscode with plugins
https://secure-web.cisco.com/1eIMQVsY7papmDtxqCBNMtk8g2ijtX3gdC-KYp-U82BZB_h_XlDZr0OaMObgz7nd8eXAc-jU8QAEt7woLv9kmVJDrSSIdqzDkCWmphIKeQlM_Ps9C3kTjHGVqlHyN1nRHilDZkF0vOf6lhMBgJjMtxofAu5JLIFLg-LtgkKSJrV2tbphEqczI0V7DjOhJl9Yktdsu127NS0ya86Ov4_v514dAIc8m40U7UHmbzQC3qcJfvPjP_1UgWuyuCgpNdnIaYrFL4-wD3BLCFp5gB7nTJ4xroq46UF88qrnKX268AWvKt_Y6DJ3oH2YbA7nDF8aO4s3hgJ4vPRwp9-I9lj73IVkvMD8HAWDWmh6NR7z40htLyMbTNcps78RxBjzs-QRw-OYb24MS1znrVMOx6MtPgP_A4paM-tyyf_Yw9dUNvAAibKMUQgFpErMz916saybS6pB7JqkgzrhbPeeSoAz6Qw/https%3A%2F%2Fibm.github.io%2Fzopeneditor-about%2F.
You can deploy editor instances on the cloud using Eclipse Che with a
web based UI. The mainframe has to keep up with the pace of
modernization or it will slowly wither on the vine as no young person
will want to work on it.
The editor is just an example. Languages and tools are just as important
as the IDE.
It also sounds like learning Python would not be a bad thing, but that it would
probably make more sense to become familiar first on an interactive ASCII
platform, and then perhaps bring the skills I learn there to Z -- rather than
starting out by trying to solve Z problems in an unfamiliar environment with an
unfamiliar language. Would others agree?
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