I can understand the windows and android analogy. And I do hate not being able to solve windows and android problems with the ease I solve them on z/OS. Over the years colleagues from other areas have come to me for help with problems on their turf, and I was able to help them because I knew how things worked between them. Usually I could point them in the right direction because I understood MVS. I did have to learn a bit of windows, a few years ago, so I could solve the problems that my father had on his pc. But sometimes I would have to reinstall windows to solve them. And that is not an option with z/OS. So, I suppose we are going into a new way of working that will be fully automated installations and IA maintenence. I did try zosmf a few years ago. I did not like the underneath complexity then and I still do not like it now. This is supposed to be a tool to install anything and everything, and to be a worflow to multiple maintenence tasks. The amount of RACF definitions and authorizations are staggering. Sometimes I do wonder if the way I look at zosmf has more to do with my age than with the product itself. I delegated the zosmf implementation to my much younger colleagues, so that my prejudices would not get in the way. But what I can say at this point is that they have managed to install it and, I think, they have managed to use it. However they have learned nothing that will help them to understand what is beneath it. They still do not grasp basic z/OS concepts. I still think that the best way to learn MVS is to build one from scratch. Unfortunately that is something seldom done. But moving your systems to a new server pack is the best alternative. There is no point bitching about zosmf and the good old days, as this is the way IBM is building it now. But Windows and android are not stable and reliable systems. At least, not the ones I have running on my devices. Jack
On Fri, May 26, 2023, 17:38 Phil Smith III <[email protected]> wrote: > Jack Zukt wrote, in part: > >The real problem, as I see it, is that drag and drop interfaces move you > >away from the need to know what you are doing. > > That’s the *goal*. Do you know what the Windows installer is doing? > Android? iOS? No you do not, beyond the high-level “putting **** in places” > and “making it bootable”. While it makes me nervous because, like you, I’ve > been doing this for too long, most people see this as a good thing, and I > can’t really dispute it. > > In 1920, if you had a car, you understood air/fuel mixture, how to do oil > and tire changes, etc. Most people don’t now, and that’s not a bad thing. > Sure, occasionally they get stranded, but by and large, it Just Works. > > On the flip side, I was switching phones and the migration failed. I did a > reset of the new phone and restarted it, and it worked the second time. Did > I understand the process? No. Did I need to? No. Am I happy that I couldn’t > tell what failed? Not really, but, again, I really didn’t need to. And > 99.44% of people wouldn’t care, as long as it worked the second try. > > and Colin Paice asked: > >Would it help if we moved to standard configurations? > > That’s the point I made before: with Windows, you’re forced into a fairly > standard configuration. With z/OS, it’s a bit late (by almost six decades): > sites aren’t going to rearrange everything. For new installs (all handful > of them), sure. But that doesn’t really help at this point, alas. > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > 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
