Link to the Lua CICSs 3270 SHARE presentation shorturl.at/ilyFG
On 8/1/22 10:29 pm, David Crayford wrote:
I think we will have to agree to disagree Rene. I certainly don't want
to engage in a sh**storm because I respect you.
I'm a REXX expert. Not only do I know the language I have written many
extensions. It's not easy because the REXX API is designed for HLASM
so I had to write a CEEPIPI glue module. Horrible REXX fact is REXX is
dog slow. The DSNREXX command environment you cited took 12secs to run
a query that luasql ran in 0.03 secs using ODBC. Reading a large file
using EXECIO is 3 orders of magnitude slower than using Lua. SDSF? A
lot of my workmates are ex IBMers some of whom worked on FileManager.
REXX was so slow they had to dump it and write a subset for the
product. There is no Lua API and I don't care about performance. We
also got Lua running in CICS so we could replace a 3270 application
with a web application shorturl.at/ilyFG. I don't use Lua much these
days as I am mainly a Java programmer. My background is 35 of years
HLASM, REXX, CLIST, COBOL, C/C++, etc, etc, etc.
On 8/1/22 9:49 pm, René Jansen wrote:
I thought gmail had eaten my reply so I took some time to give you a
more elaborate reaction. I am still sorry that you need to resort to
ad-hominems but I would like to give you some facts. It is not only
my undeniable love for Rexx (but I do program in anything that the
job requires, even ABAP, well maybe not that anymore), but also for
z/OS, and the facts are these:
Rexx has (on z/OS, at least) the following address environments:
TSO
MVS
ISREDIT
ISPEXEC
ISPF Panel Rexx
ISPF File Tailoring Skeleton Rexx
CONSOLE
LINK, LINKMVS, LINKPGM, ATTACH, ATTCHMVS, ATTCHPGM
SYSCALL
SDSF
DSNREXX
IPCS
IRRXUTIL
RACVAR
Then there is:
System Rexx
Rexx/CICS
and I even saw some NetView Rexx only last year.
There are very many samples of how to use MQ, DB2, ICSF, DFDSS, VSAM
(you told us that Rexx does not support VSAM but that is also plainly
untrue, there are many ways to do that), variable record SAM. Someone
starting on the platform with only Python in their repertoire would
be lost.
I fail to see how much computer science gimmickry (which I also
enjoy, really, but on the Raspberry Pi and the macbook) that mostly
is available in the latest releases of coming and going fad languages
(you mentioned Swift as one - Swift I appreciate because of the
Objective C integration as not to invalidate people’s code, and those
clean OO concepts which make C++ seem overcomplicated) *compensates*
for not having these interfaces to the platform. I worry for the
platform when its originator deprecates it in an act of self-harm.
Personally, I think that Linux is better done in Linux than in USS,
at least in Linux on Z, which makes people happy while still running
a solid platform.
I also like the other languages you mention and I see the appeal of
Lua as a macro language for gaming and LuaTeX. Still, numeric support
is bad and Unicode support is worse. It does macro language worse
than the original macro language, certainly on z/OS. For applications
you don’t need those interfaces, but then I would like to see Elixir,
and maybe Prolog and APL in open source versions, instead of all
those small variations on C, C++, Java, JS - the aforementioned
really bring something to the table.
Unless a lot of work is done to make Python support the above list of
interfaces, it is - in my view - plainly the wrong proposition for
the platform. Maybe some good examples of how to use IRXSUBCM,
SHVBLOCK, ENVBLOCK, EXECBLK and EVALBLOCK from Python would help in
addressing these interfaces. You can interface Python using C
routines to those (need examples), but I think that would needlessly
complicate things, as opposed to the language that has syntax for that.
So I stand by my original propositions, but after being called
unprofessional, a luddite, red flagged and whatever after mentioning
factual truths, I fear for the quality of the discussion here. To
really modernize, lots of device specific code needs to be taken out
to adapt to the current reality (DB2 did that some years ago and
guess what, taking out the optimizations for non-existing disks made
it faster), the strong points of the OS (LPA, LLA) need to be
reinforced for newer software, TCP/IP within the boxes still needs to
be a lot better, better scripting level tools like Pipelines (that
know about the environment) need to be included (doesn’t IBM look at
SHARE requirement anymore?), instead of building layers on top of it,
like new filesystems added on top or equivalent scripting
environments added that can do less than the existing ones. And there
is always the danger of fighting the last war.
best regards,
René.
On 8 Jan 2022, at 07:49, David Crayford <
Nobody is denying the value of that code. I wrote thousands of lines
of REXX code for system automation back in the 90s
I just can’t find a use case for writing new REXX code today.
Everything had changed.
On 8 Jan 2022, at 19:40, René Jansen <
Well I am explicitly not reacting on another round of namecalling.
What is worrying to me is the denial of the value of all existing
interfaces in the OS and infrastructure to the standard scripting
language on the platform, making the ‘modernization’ effort a
reduction to uss, which will be hated by everybody used to Linux.
But if the reaction consists of ‘unprofessional’, I’m done.
On 8 Jan 2022, at 05:43, David Crayford <
Why not compile lua to support utf8?
Your unrelenting love of REXX worries me. it’s the perfect
example of personal preference over a functional requirement which
is unprofessional and a red flag.
On 8 Jan 2022, at 14:57, René Jansen <
I looked at your list and I am happy to see that these include
the things you find important. JS is undeniably a big factor but
“the good parts” is a thin booklet. As is groovy - slow and
nevery had any appeal to me, just looks messy. I quite like Ruby
as an idea but slow as molasses.
Today I looked at Lua, and although quite elegant, small and
snappy, I am really disappointed that this is one of those
languages that gives you wrong answers for numeric problems and
having unicode support in a utf8 library that is different from
the string functions - that is just funny. I am not implying that
all Rexx implementations shine in this regard, but that is just
neglect. NetRexx does, however, as it does in unlimited decimal
precision arithmetic.
Of course NetRexx can use the Java stream API for functional
programming. That remark is just as odd as ‘it only has one
type’. The fact that it is from 1995 and can use features that
only appeared in Java 8 - personally I find that telling about
the quality of the design. But I am not telling you that you need
to like it - like the way we are told that we now need to like
Python more than Rexx, while it cannot do what we need to do -
for all the wrong reasons.
Looking at your list of requirements I think Scheme had it quite
covered. Some of them are gimmicky and some seem useful. None of
them address the core qualities of the mainframe, which are
Channels, packed decimal, DB2, CICS and COBOL (as long as you
forbid dynamic memory).
I think the discussion has strayed too much from what sparked it,
which is a hitpiece with 8 untruths about Python and Rexx. Yes we
like all languages to be available, and well maintained on z/OS.
Please provide interfaces and precompilers for the main
infrastructure. It is remarkably odd that IBM does not invest in
the things that made the platform what it is, but it is not my
problem. If the message is that the mainframe now can run the
same software as the Raspberry Pi or your generic AWS instance,
so be it.
I think you will find that other people are emotionally attached
to their tools and programming languages, it is a human thing.
Also, I found that not all people can easily switch between a
large number of ever-changing programming languages; which is
meant as a compliment to you; but nevertheless very true.
So I thank you all for a very interesting discussion.
Best regards,
René.
On 7 Jan 2022, at 20:53, David Crayford <
I could go on. Even Java supports functional programming since
Java 1.8 and which introduced the streams API. It's unusual to
see and old school loop in modern Java code. Even C++ has lambda's.
I missed "closures" on my list which code hand in hand with
"functions as first class objects". Very powerful, for example
in Kotlin you can easily create type safe builders (DSLs)
That's why I have absolutely no interest in NetRexx. I have far
better options on the JVM. I don't get emotionally attached to
programming languages. If a better one becomes available I will
quite happily switch as I have done
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