ISPF productivity

I love ISPF, I really do.  The Editor in particular is a brilliant piece of work, and in my opinion represents the gold standard for text-based editors.  ISPF also provides a very rich API so those that are conversant with ISPF dialog progamming can create useful and sometimes very complex applications. Yeah, those applications are text-based, but since most mainframe programming is done in a text-based world that doesn't matter.

I have written many such applications, and truth be told, it's a lot more fun to write ISPF Dialogs than to write Cobol code.  

Still, ISPF has its shortcomings.  The product uses hierarchical menus that require skill and experience to navigate.  To be sure, there are many short cuts, but it takes time to learn them.  Also, it does not provide a convenient mechanism for organizing the myriad of data sets, DB2 tables, IMS data bases and TSO commands that the programmer has to cope with every day.

I once wrote an ISPF Dialog application that helped me manage all of that stuff, and I was amazed how much time you could save if you aren't constantly searching for half-remembered data set names.   I've used such a tool for many years now, but more recently I've been relying on a commercial product called Simplist, which is way better than anything I've been able to write for myself. It's not free, but it's not expensive either.  I highly recommend it.

Don't believe me?  This guy likes it too.

Disclaimer: I have written about SimpList on several occasions.  I would like to point out that I have no financial interest in SimpList or any other commercial software product.  My opinion is that of an experienced mainframe developer and consultant, not a product shill.  My product review was originally published in Technical Support, the official journal of the Network and Systems Professionals Association (NaSPA).