In the semi-famous Logica hack in Sweden - I did some research into the
details, some years ago - the intruders seemed competent to write their own
binary code and run it in OMVS. But they bogged down when they had to
link-edit something; they had a number of failures because of a laughably bad
JOB card, and eventually gave up. In Unix they were perfectly comfortable, but
JCL conquered them.
I was tempted to sneer at the time ("can't even be bothered to read an error
message!"), but I've been learning mainframe for 30 years now. Wait, 40 years?
My gosh, 50, almost! I gotta learn to subtract faster than that. Anyway,
I've forgotten more than they're likely ever to learn, as the saying goes (and
I'm by no means expert), so it's probably well to keep in mind that it wasn't
obvious to me at first, either.
---
Bob Bridges, [email protected], cell 336 382-7313
/* Proverbs are freeze-dried reality: Your success in understanding them
correctly will vary with the quality of the water you use to reconstitute them.
-unknown */
-----Original Message-----
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> On Behalf Of
Farley, Peter
Sent: Friday, February 24, 2023 12:23
....I have been using the IBM Zxplore website on my own time for over a year
now for enhanced learning of some of the "new" technologies available on our
mainframe systems, and I have been consistently surprised to observe the actual
difficulties that genuine newcomers to mainframe systems have with many
fundamental concepts that we take for granted. The "almost tree-like (but not
really)" structure of mainframe datasets and the use (and mis-use) of JCL seem
to be the most frequent cause of misunderstanding and errors, along with
learning to read and understand the messages generated from a batch job or
utility execution.
It isn't the client-side tool interface (VSCode vs TSO/ISPF) that gives most of
the newcomers fits, they seem to pick that up without too many problems. It's
the fundamental system operational differences that make it harder for them to
grasp, at least at first.
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