> -----Original Message----- > From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Ron and Jenny Hawkins > Sent: Thursday, July 14, 2005 11:07 AM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: Another - Another One Bites the Dust > > > Bill, >
<snip> > One other thing springs to mind about Unix sites. Unlike many > MVS sites, I > do not often see a huge amount of server power set aside for > an army of > programmers developing and maintaining application code. > Either they are > well hidden, or development requires far less man effort and > MIPS than MVS. > > Ron Well, my take is that most of the "program development" for Windows (definately) and UNIX (maybe) are done on the desktop. We were looking at a Windows based COBOL development environment for our z/OS programmers. The manager in charge of the project "went insane". Instead of simply getting "n" seats of the COBOL IDE, he started looking at offloading all the testing to a Windows server. So now, we have the cost of the Server, and disk, and software. He then determined that "developing COBOL on the desktop is too expensive" and killed the entire project. I agree that developing COBOL on the zSeries cost more in terms of man power than, say, VB. Why? Because VB comes with a lot of packaged subroutines for many functions that the COBOL people end up programming themselves. VB does OOP fairly well. COBOL does OOP, but our programmers are never sent to any training (too expensive!), so that are almost terminally ignorant of anything more advanced than "in-line PERFORM". They just learned about EVALUATE and went to heaven about how much better it was than nested IFs. IMO, this is a management problem. They don't want to spend money training __anybody__. So the people who know the newer, faster, development techniques are the younger people, who mainly know Windows or UNIX from college. Our IDE is TSO/ISPF. 'Nuff said comparing that against something like the Windows Visual Developer, or Eclipse, or even Netbeans. I would dearly love a really good, inexpensive, IDE for z/OS COBOL development. Especially if it could be integrated with the z/OS system (avoiding things like explicit FTPs or other file transfer). IMO, the problem is that if a vendor does develop something like that, they will price it in the stratosphere compared to Visual Developer. -- John McKown Senior Systems Programmer UICI Insurance Center Information Technology This message (including any attachments) contains confidential information intended for a specific individual and purpose, and its' content is protected by law. If you are not the intended recipient, you should delete this message and are hereby notified that any disclosure, copying, or distribution of this transmission, or taking any action based on it, is strictly prohibited. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
