I found myself with some spare cycles at work the other day, so I spent some time reading a few dumps created by our online production regions.
Does that make me weird?
There was a time that I found dumps to be both tedious and intimidating, but modern dump formatters have made it much easier to figure out what happened. For example, except in very rare cases, a Cobol programmer reading a dump no longer needs to know the register contents or indeed, what a register is. Nor does the programmer have to know how to determine the instruction in error or how to find the program's BLW and BLL cells. The dump formatter lays it all out for you.
I must hasten to add that interpreting a dump is still a challenging intellectual exercise because you need the ability to understand the application logic and have enough imagination to figure out how your data got into the state it is in. In many cases you also require an intimate understanding of how your application interacts with its execution environment.
Thanks to the dump formatter, it only took me a few hours to diagnose a handful of problems that were responsible for about half of the abends in our application's online regions. Were it not for the formatter, I probably would not have volunteered for the job.
2010-11-25
2010-11-17
The Project
My wife and I both work in the IT business, so we sometimes tend to view things through the lens of our profession.
When our first child was born, we referred to him as "the Project". The objective of this multi-year endeavor was to raise a fully functional human being and good citizen who would eventually become a middle class taxpayer. Is that not the duty of every parent?
Less than two years later we were affected by "scope creep" when our second child came along. As Bill Cosby once said, you do not become a real parent until you have more than one child. "Why? Because if you have only one child, and something is broken in your house, you know who did it!"
Additional funding was not forthcoming as a result of this change. We found the money by reducing other expenses such as dining out, exotic vacations, and by eliminating most adult social activities.
Current Status: Green. We anticipate a +15% variance due to unplanned educational expenses.
When our first child was born, we referred to him as "the Project". The objective of this multi-year endeavor was to raise a fully functional human being and good citizen who would eventually become a middle class taxpayer. Is that not the duty of every parent?
Less than two years later we were affected by "scope creep" when our second child came along. As Bill Cosby once said, you do not become a real parent until you have more than one child. "Why? Because if you have only one child, and something is broken in your house, you know who did it!"
Additional funding was not forthcoming as a result of this change. We found the money by reducing other expenses such as dining out, exotic vacations, and by eliminating most adult social activities.
Current Status: Green. We anticipate a +15% variance due to unplanned educational expenses.
2010-11-12
RUT?
Like many parents, I used to cluck disapprovingly when I saw the silly short forms and tangled syntax used by my kids as they chatted with their friends. "What a waste of time!" I thought. But I never hassled them about it because I knew there were much worse things that they could have been doing on the Internet. And besides, if they didn't have chat they'd be tying up my phone line or running up their cell phone bills.
I had zero (0) interest in using chat for myself. After all, grown ups communicate in full sentences and we try to get our spelling and grammar correct. (With varying degrees of success, as any reader of this blog can attest).
Email is a much more refined method of communication; it is both fast and thoughtful. I've been using it for many years, even in prehistoric times when the corporate email system ran on an IBM mainframe. I am no Luddite pining for the days of typed memoranda* and carbon paper. I was quite happy when all of that stuff moved into the electronic age.
But chat was for kids. It was easy to avoid; every company I worked for forbade the use of chat anyway.
I recently joined a company that not only allows chat, it encourages you to use it to talk to co-workers. At first I ignored it, figuring that the only reason they allowed chat was to allow the under-30 crowd to coordinate their lunch plans. Or perhaps to save money on phone expenses for its geographically dispersed work force.
What I didn't realize is how productive chat can be when you are closely collaborating with others on a complex task. Chat eliminates a lot of phone calls and greatly reduces the amount of shouting over cubicle walls in the office. And, if you can't remember what somebody said 10 minutes ago, you can look it up.
Call me a convert. (It's okay, I've been called far worse).
* This word is so outdated that my spell checker flags it as an error.
I had zero (0) interest in using chat for myself. After all, grown ups communicate in full sentences and we try to get our spelling and grammar correct. (With varying degrees of success, as any reader of this blog can attest).
Email is a much more refined method of communication; it is both fast and thoughtful. I've been using it for many years, even in prehistoric times when the corporate email system ran on an IBM mainframe. I am no Luddite pining for the days of typed memoranda* and carbon paper. I was quite happy when all of that stuff moved into the electronic age.
But chat was for kids. It was easy to avoid; every company I worked for forbade the use of chat anyway.
I recently joined a company that not only allows chat, it encourages you to use it to talk to co-workers. At first I ignored it, figuring that the only reason they allowed chat was to allow the under-30 crowd to coordinate their lunch plans. Or perhaps to save money on phone expenses for its geographically dispersed work force.
What I didn't realize is how productive chat can be when you are closely collaborating with others on a complex task. Chat eliminates a lot of phone calls and greatly reduces the amount of shouting over cubicle walls in the office. And, if you can't remember what somebody said 10 minutes ago, you can look it up.
Call me a convert. (It's okay, I've been called far worse).
* This word is so outdated that my spell checker flags it as an error.
2010-11-11
I love bugs
Like most programmers, every now and then one of my programs works correctly the first time. Most programmers are thrilled when that happens. Personally, I feel a pang of regret.
Hunting for bugs is what I like best about this business. To me, a perfectly working program may be admirable, but it's boring.
Hunting for bugs is what I like best about this business. To me, a perfectly working program may be admirable, but it's boring.
2010-08-25
The mainframe strikes back
I attended an interesting IBM presentation today on the topic of zIIPs, zAAPs and IFLs.
These specialty z processors are designed to support "new" workloads that were formerly the domain of Java, Linux, and *ix. After spending the past two decades losing workloads to the other platforms, the mainframe is finally* winning some of it back.
*Actually these processors have been around for the past decade or so, so it's not that recent a development.
These specialty z processors are designed to support "new" workloads that were formerly the domain of Java, Linux, and *ix. After spending the past two decades losing workloads to the other platforms, the mainframe is finally* winning some of it back.
*Actually these processors have been around for the past decade or so, so it's not that recent a development.
2010-08-19
Nostalgia: program flow charts
Junior programmers were once required to produce a flow chart of their program before beginning to code. They were told that it would help them work out their logic so that their coding and testing would go more smoothly.
I think it was a scam.
The real purpose of a Program flow-chart was to slow down the coding process in order to ease the workload of the keypunch department.
Full disclosure: When I started my career there was no keypunch department where I worked. We shared terminals; one for every two people. Yes kiddies, I said terminals not PCs emulating terminals.
Those were not the good old days.
I think it was a scam.
The real purpose of a Program flow-chart was to slow down the coding process in order to ease the workload of the keypunch department.
Full disclosure: When I started my career there was no keypunch department where I worked. We shared terminals; one for every two people. Yes kiddies, I said terminals not PCs emulating terminals.
Those were not the good old days.
Checkpoint
You may have noticed that I haven't posted anything since January 2010. There is no deep dark reason for this; just the usual combination of laziness and busy-ness.
Most of the posts prior to this point represent a collection of stuff that I've posted on the Internet over the past several years. A "best of" collection, I suppose.
I've recently started a new job, and that is always a good way to find some inspiration.
In my first IT job, I was well indoctrinated (brainwashed) in the procedures and processes demanded by that company. The procedure and processes were (mostly) reasonable, and what the hell, I didn't know any better anyway.
The problem came on my second career stop. I thought the new shop was idiotic for doing things differently than my old one. It was quite an adjustment, but eventually I realized that there were some interesting ideas there that I have since incorporated into my own work.
Now, many years later, I find myself back at the original company, older, wiser, and with a broader perspective.
Most of the posts prior to this point represent a collection of stuff that I've posted on the Internet over the past several years. A "best of" collection, I suppose.
I've recently started a new job, and that is always a good way to find some inspiration.
In my first IT job, I was well indoctrinated (brainwashed) in the procedures and processes demanded by that company. The procedure and processes were (mostly) reasonable, and what the hell, I didn't know any better anyway.
The problem came on my second career stop. I thought the new shop was idiotic for doing things differently than my old one. It was quite an adjustment, but eventually I realized that there were some interesting ideas there that I have since incorporated into my own work.
Now, many years later, I find myself back at the original company, older, wiser, and with a broader perspective.
2010-01-15
5 ways to start a war on a mainframe forum
- Use the acronym "USS" to refer to z/OS Unix features.
- Propose the elimination of the 100 byte limit on PARM length in JCL.
- Complain about the limitations on the use of System Symbols in JCL.
- In a COBOL forum, declare that coding is Paragraphs is better than coding in Sections. Or vice-versa.
- Praise Oracle on a DB2 forum.
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