I had a choice 30 years ago to go into the pc, server, network side of IT or go the mainframe direction. I chose the mainframe because I liked it better. I'm not a GUI fan. It's not Windows. I do have grey hair. I do understand the need to atract younger people to the mainframe. What I don't understand is why IBM would take away a working method (SERVERPAC) and force those of us with grey to learn something new when we well know how to use what we already have in place. And, a lot of us looking at retirement not toooo far away.
Randy Harris P 615-344-3244 C 662-401-8552 [email protected] -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Phil Smith III Sent: Wednesday, May 24, 2023 1:58 PM To: [email protected] Subject: {EXTERNAL} Re: Re: zOSMF CAUTION! This email originated from outside of our organization. DO NOT CLICK links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe. Beverly Caldwell wrote: >If zosmf is the answer what the hell was the question? I’m going to take that as a straight question. I assume the question was, “How do we make z/OS easier to install and maintain for folks who don’t have any grey hair yet?” This is essentially the same question that led to GUIs in general. The problem is that it’s not trivial to answer—putting some lipstick on the pig doesn’t always do it: sometimes you need to restructure the pig. <possibly insert “waste of time and it annoys the pig” joke> I’m reminded of the Windows version of the Relay/Gold terminal emulator, which was acquired by VM Systems Group when I was there. Under certain SDLC error conditions, it would drop out of the Windows UI into a DOS error dialog. Which was not really recoverable, since it needed someone to press a key. At one point a customer was considering buying a power strip that plugged into a phone line and could be called to cause it to power cycle, as they had an automated process that would be stopped when this error occurred. Talk about a Rube Goldberg solution! I’m sure the real fix was a single line of code somewhere, but finding that was non-trivial, of course. Especially since Relay/Gold was written in x86 assembler, a non-standard variant from a dead company. So there were no diagnostic tools to speak of. And as a tiny vendor, we didn’t have the hardware to even simulate the error…Good times. /s ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
