4 ms·

I work with a lot of COBOL dinosaurs in the bank, I often like to watch them work on their 16-colors IBM z/OS host terminals, it's quite mesmerizing. Sometimes

I work with a lot of COBOL dinosaurs in the bank, I often like to watch them work on their 16-colors IBM z/OS host terminals, it's quite mesmerizing. Sometimes they show me some interesting code that was written before I was alive (I'm 36), or tell me stories about big mainframe incidents in the '80s, where they would get called in the middle of the night and flown to a different country to fix a bug because there was no remote desktop back then.

accrual 1y ago
> I often like to watch them work on their 16-colors IBM z/OS host terminals, it's quite mesmerizing They really are. I had a parttime coworker who moonlighted some mainframe job and he often had another laptop on his desk connected to a z/OS terminal. He would show me some of the jobs and code occasionally too, really fascinating stuff, and he was quite good at it and could navigate quickly.
TechDebtDevin 1y ago
<16-colors IBM z/OS host terminal This hasn't been virtualized?
- krylon 1y ago
  They're probably using a 3270 emulator on a PC, but that emulator will still display 16 colors.
- slowmotiony 1y ago
  From what I understand, they log in to a citrix-like webpage called IBM Host On Demand and then start a java applet which is essentially a 16-color 3270 emulator that's connected to z/OS mainframe.
kazinator 1y ago
PuTTY into Linux and you're in 16 colors.
- haiku2077 1y ago
  My Linux terminal is 256 colors. Two hundred fifty six! That's like, every color!
  - supportengineer 1y ago
    Laughs in Amiga
  - kragen 1y ago
    24-bit color support (\033[38;2;rrr;ggg;bbbm) has been mainline in both Konsole and in libvte-based terminal emulators for many years. 16777216 colors. That's still not every color, but it's every color your monitor can display. When I wrote http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/dev3/gradient.c http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/dev3/gradient.c in 02016 I had it in Konsole but not libvte, though I think it had been added to libvte upstream. http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/dev3/gradient.png http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/dev3/gradient.png Color in terminal emulators was one of the main perks of Linux over other Unixes for me at first!
    - haiku2077 1y ago
      I intentionally use 256 colors mode because I prefer the vibe :)
  - FlyingSnake 1y ago
    256 colors ought to be enough for anybody.
ksherlock 1y ago
Damn mainframe people flaunting their 16 colors like they're a peacock or something. Shit. We only had one color (and one absence of a color) and that was good enough.
- Cthulhu_ 1y ago
  16 colors is juvenile. When I was a child, I was taught arithmetic using colored rods. I grew up and today I use monochromatic screens. (paraphrased: https://groups.google.com/g/golang-nuts/c/hJHCAaiL0so/m/kG3BHV6QFfIJ https://groups.google.com/g/golang-nuts/c/hJHCAaiL0so/m/kG3B...)
  - coryrc 1y ago
    OT: Do you know if was he being serious, joking, or "haha only serious" in the linked message?
    - wavemode 1y ago
      Most of the comments by everyone in that thread are sarcastic, and the tone of the thread is lighthearted. Pike genuinely doesn't seem to care for syntax highlighting, though understands that his is a minority opinion.
    - woodrowbarlow 1y ago
      i think that's at least mostly serious. he's not a fan of syntax highlighting. https://ctrl-c.us/posts/highlight https://ctrl-c.us/posts/highlight
chasil 1y ago
I work with developers who code on OS 2200 and VAX VMS (running on Charon emulation). Fun fact: the first SMP UNIX implementation ran on top of EXEC 8, the kernel of OS 2200. "Any configuration supplied by Sperry, including multiprocessor ones, can run the UNIX system." https://www.nokia.com/bell-labs/about/dennis-m-ritchie/retro.pdf https://www.nokia.com/bell-labs/about/dennis-m-ritchie/retro... Edit: https://web.archive.org/web/20150611114648/https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/otherports/newp.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20150611114648/https://www.bell-... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIVAC_1100/2200_series https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIVAC_1100/2200_series
countrymile 1y ago
I used to work with the most amazing blind COBOL programmer on CICS code. His speed in finding and fixing code with a screen reader, was mind blowing.
FlyingSnake 1y ago
I’ve built systems for iSeries and none of the modern fancy GUI IDEs come close to the speed of those IBM 5250 terminals. You can still see such terminals in action in POCO baumarkt in Berlin. One of the modules I saw in action was written before the moon landing, written by a lady programmer.

accrual 1y ago

> I often like to watch them work on their 16-colors IBM z/OS host terminals, it's quite mesmerizing They really are. I had a parttime coworker who moonlighted some mainframe job and he often had another laptop on his desk connected to a z/OS terminal. He would show me some of the jobs and code occasionally too, really fascinating stuff, and he was quite good at it and could navigate quickly.

TechDebtDevin 1y ago

<16-colors IBM z/OS host terminal This hasn't been virtualized?

krylon 1y ago
They're probably using a 3270 emulator on a PC, but that emulator will still display 16 colors.
slowmotiony 1y ago
From what I understand, they log in to a citrix-like webpage called IBM Host On Demand and then start a java applet which is essentially a 16-color 3270 emulator that's connected to z/OS mainframe.

kazinator 1y ago

PuTTY into Linux and you're in 16 colors.

haiku2077 1y ago
My Linux terminal is 256 colors. Two hundred fifty six! That's like, every color!
- supportengineer 1y ago
  Laughs in Amiga
- kragen 1y ago
  24-bit color support (\033[38;2;rrr;ggg;bbbm) has been mainline in both Konsole and in libvte-based terminal emulators for many years. 16777216 colors. That's still not every color, but it's every color your monitor can display. When I wrote http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/dev3/gradient.c http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/dev3/gradient.c in 02016 I had it in Konsole but not libvte, though I think it had been added to libvte upstream. http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/dev3/gradient.png http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/dev3/gradient.png Color in terminal emulators was one of the main perks of Linux over other Unixes for me at first!
  - haiku2077 1y ago
    I intentionally use 256 colors mode because I prefer the vibe :)
- FlyingSnake 1y ago
  256 colors ought to be enough for anybody.

ksherlock 1y ago

Damn mainframe people flaunting their 16 colors like they're a peacock or something. Shit. We only had one color (and one absence of a color) and that was good enough.

Cthulhu_ 1y ago
16 colors is juvenile. When I was a child, I was taught arithmetic using colored rods. I grew up and today I use monochromatic screens. (paraphrased: https://groups.google.com/g/golang-nuts/c/hJHCAaiL0so/m/kG3BHV6QFfIJ https://groups.google.com/g/golang-nuts/c/hJHCAaiL0so/m/kG3B...)
- coryrc 1y ago
  OT: Do you know if was he being serious, joking, or "haha only serious" in the linked message?
  - wavemode 1y ago
    Most of the comments by everyone in that thread are sarcastic, and the tone of the thread is lighthearted. Pike genuinely doesn't seem to care for syntax highlighting, though understands that his is a minority opinion.
  - woodrowbarlow 1y ago
    i think that's at least mostly serious. he's not a fan of syntax highlighting. https://ctrl-c.us/posts/highlight https://ctrl-c.us/posts/highlight

chasil 1y ago

I work with developers who code on OS 2200 and VAX VMS (running on Charon emulation). Fun fact: the first SMP UNIX implementation ran on top of EXEC 8, the kernel of OS 2200. "Any configuration supplied by Sperry, including multiprocessor ones, can run the UNIX system." https://www.nokia.com/bell-labs/about/dennis-m-ritchie/retro.pdf https://www.nokia.com/bell-labs/about/dennis-m-ritchie/retro... Edit: https://web.archive.org/web/20150611114648/https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/otherports/newp.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20150611114648/https://www.bell-... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIVAC_1100/2200_series https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIVAC_1100/2200_series

countrymile 1y ago

I used to work with the most amazing blind COBOL programmer on CICS code. His speed in finding and fixing code with a screen reader, was mind blowing.

FlyingSnake 1y ago

I’ve built systems for iSeries and none of the modern fancy GUI IDEs come close to the speed of those IBM 5250 terminals. You can still see such terminals in action in POCO baumarkt in Berlin. One of the modules I saw in action was written before the moon landing, written by a lady programmer.