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I've dived relatively deeply into mainframes as a small, intermittent hobby the last few years (https://www.jaymoseley.com/hercules/ https://www.jaymoseley.com/

by anyfoo 4y ago

I've dived relatively deeply into mainframes as a small, intermittent hobby the last few years (https://www.jaymoseley.com/hercules/ https://www.jaymoseley.com/hercules/). Read (and organized!) a lot of IBM documentation, played with JCL more than just on the surface, explored corners of the OS, and dabbled with some s/360 assembly and PL/I. At some point I inspected hex dumps of the disk ("DASD") images to prove a theory I had. What attracted me to it is just how different it is from the UNIX/PC world I'm coming from, it's endlessly interesting, it challenges what you assumed were ground truths. So is AS/400 (or IBM i as it is now called), which is also completely different but in some ways opposite to how the mainframe world is different. Those two rewired my understanding of OS reality like Haskell rewired my understanding of programming language reality. At this point I could probably dive into COBOL and pivot my job into maintaining mainframe stuff, and some part of me thinks it's fun, but I have a fun low level programming job, so I don't know if I'd ever really do that. Maybe to fill time during retirement?

anyfoo 4y ago
Okay, I uncharacteristically have to respond to my own post, because I happened to reread it in the "threads" tab and it jumped out to myself just how wrong it sounds, even though it was upvoted. I had edited it before hitting send, and apparently did not notice that I kind of damaged the meaning. So to be clear, what I meant to say was that for a small hobby I dived relatively deeply into it (i.e. I see others messing with it for fun not caring that much about e.g. JCL), and that I wet my feet enough that if I put the serious work in, I could see myself eventually becoming productive in the COBOL and mainframe world. Just because rereading it, it sounded like I said I became mainframe proficient to a commercial level by playing around with a many decades old MVS version on Hercules, which is hilarious.

by anyfoo 4y ago

anyfoo 4y ago

Okay, I uncharacteristically have to respond to my own post, because I happened to reread it in the "threads" tab and it jumped out to myself just how wrong it sounds, even though it was upvoted. I had edited it before hitting send, and apparently did not notice that I kind of damaged the meaning. So to be clear, what I meant to say was that for a small hobby I dived relatively deeply into it (i.e. I see others messing with it for fun not caring that much about e.g. JCL), and that I wet my feet enough that if I put the serious work in, I could see myself eventually becoming productive in the COBOL and mainframe world. Just because rereading it, it sounded like I said I became mainframe proficient to a commercial level by playing around with a many decades old MVS version on Hercules, which is hilarious.