I agree. I'm not knocking ISPF! I use it a lot, mainly SDSF as I use GUI
editors. The rest of the time I spend in a UNIX terminal shell using a
CLI. For a lot of tasks ISPF is the best tool for the job.
BTW, calling a mainframer a dinosaur is not commonly considered an insult
;)
On 2020-03-30 10:36 AM, Seymour J Metz wrote:
Not all change is progress. I like to be an early adopter, but if the
latest thing on the block is garbage then call me a dynosaur - I won't use
it voluntarily. If an old language or old tool suits my needs, I won't drop
it just because it's out of fashion. ISPF have flaws, but they also have
strengths; I will continue to use them when it makes sense to do so.
Amusingly enough, some of the "modern" software that I'm supposed to put up
with is itself pretty long in the tooth.
Note; I don't like Perl syntax, but I use it anyway - because it offers
me enough that I'm willing to put up with it.
--
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz
http://mason.gmu.edu/~smetz3
________________________________________
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [[email protected]] on
behalf of David Crayford [[email protected]]
Sent: Sunday, March 29, 2020 10:08 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: strange python announcement
On 2020-03-30 2:43 AM, Charles Mills wrote:
There's no advantage to REXX anymore, as fine a language as it is.
is not entirely true, right? Three advantages of Rexx would be native
support of EBCDIC, native support of xSAM, and straightforward invocation
from TSO? Right?
Again, not trying to pick a fight, just trying to understand.
Here's my motivation: I am trying to avoid dinosaurization. I am
trying to answer the questions "am I being an old fuddy-duddy for sticking
with Rexx over Python? Should I make an effort to embrace Python for the
tasks where I now tend to turn to Rexx?"
Take the dinosaur test. Do you use Git?
And it sounds like the answer is No. Whatever dinosaurism I exhibit is
in sticking with TSO and ISPF, not in sticking with Rexx. (For what it's
worth, when I speak with customer personnel, 100% of them, to a man or
woman, seems to assume the computer world revolves around TSO for sysprogs
and batch for production -- so it makes sense for me to be most conversant
with those environments.)
Is that a stereotype? I see a lot of young people working on mainframes
(boths sysprogs and applications guys) who use modern tooling. The
editor of choice is vscode with plugins
https://secure-web.cisco.com/1eIMQVsY7papmDtxqCBNMtk8g2ijtX3gdC-KYp-U82BZB_h_XlDZr0OaMObgz7nd8eXAc-jU8QAEt7woLv9kmVJDrSSIdqzDkCWmphIKeQlM_Ps9C3kTjHGVqlHyN1nRHilDZkF0vOf6lhMBgJjMtxofAu5JLIFLg-LtgkKSJrV2tbphEqczI0V7DjOhJl9Yktdsu127NS0ya86Ov4_v514dAIc8m40U7UHmbzQC3qcJfvPjP_1UgWuyuCgpNdnIaYrFL4-wD3BLCFp5gB7nTJ4xroq46UF88qrnKX268AWvKt_Y6DJ3oH2YbA7nDF8aO4s3hgJ4vPRwp9-I9lj73IVkvMD8HAWDWmh6NR7z40htLyMbTNcps78RxBjzs-QRw-OYb24MS1znrVMOx6MtPgP_A4paM-tyyf_Yw9dUNvAAibKMUQgFpErMz916saybS6pB7JqkgzrhbPeeSoAz6Qw/https%3A%2F%2Fibm.github.io%2Fzopeneditor-about%2F
.
You can deploy editor instances on the cloud using Eclipse Che with a
web based UI. The mainframe has to keep up with the pace of
modernization or it will slowly wither on the vine as no young person
will want to work on it.
The editor is just an example. Languages and tools are just as important
as the IDE.
It also sounds like learning Python would not be a bad thing, but that
it would probably make more sense to become familiar first on an
interactive ASCII platform, and then perhaps bring the skills I learn there
to Z -- rather than starting out by trying to solve Z problems in an
unfamiliar environment with an unfamiliar language. Would others agree?
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