Mike Murach wrote the ALC for Dummies back in the 70s.
That's well and good (except that a helluvalot has changed since the '70s).
But I'm talking about a better "ALC for Experts".
Dave
Mike Murrell
H-E-B
Mainframe Support Group
Arsenal - West/1 Atrium
210-573-0239
[email protected]
-----Original Message-----
From: IBM Mainframe Assembler List [ mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of john gilmore
Sent: Friday, August 19, 2011 9:58 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: HLASM manuals
There has been some discussion of these manuals on IBM-MAIN. Its main thrust appears to be that they should be dumbed down. (This terminology is of course avoided.)
My own view is that no fundamental rethinking of either their organization or content is required.
Detailed improvements are sometimes needed.
An example. I conducted a client workshop on the macro language in July; and during it I realized for the first time that too many questions about the syntax of the BIFs were coming up because the LR examples of their use all feature constant arguments when some at least (and in my view most) of them should feature set-symbol ones instead. I have a memo for John Ehrman about this in the works; in my experience he has always been receptive to such suggestions; and making them is, I think, the way to get such changes made.
The burden of what I am saying is that a Language Reference is not a tutorial introduction. There may well be a place and market for an HLASM for dummies publication, but making the LR into one is not, in my view, a good idea.
John Gilmore Ashland, MA 01721-1817 USA
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