Difficult to work on IBM Z? Com’on!

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Looking at my profile picture (not a recommended activity, by the way) you might spot a grey hair or two and it could set you off thinking this guy has worked on Z for decades.

But that is not the case. In fact, it has only been 7 years that I had the pleasure to really dip into this intriguing system.

And yes, I had my struggles to get myself familiarize with the platform specifics, and still have, to be completely honest with you. I’m still wondering why I should specify a long-gone hard disk type to create a new file (or member as it is called on IBM Z). Silly things, in my humble opinion, that should be hidden from the end user for a long time.

However, this article is not covering the sometimes clunky things one has to do on IBM Z.

No!

It is about an event I’ve set up, now more than a year ago in those happy days when we could actuallly get together. It started with me waking up one morning with the thought: “Would it be possible to have a bunch of newbies on IBM Z get an application developed on z/OS in one single day?”

Hmm, intriguing, isn’t it? So, I kicked this idea around for a while and decided to propose it to the Guide Share Europe (GSE) chairman in my home country, The Netherlands. His name is Ron Eland, and he is always supporting new ideas. The only ask from him was to set aside a room at the Dutch National GSE Conference and let 20 students in that could hack away on an IBM Z located in the IBM Montpellier Systems Garage.

He was all in and while discussing the idea with him, we decided that we could kick off the project during the morning plenary session for 200+ attendees and encourage the audience to stick their head around the room where the youngsters were.

I thought it would be cool to have a panel of experts evaluating the work the students did and we found Mr. Henk Dasler , VP Payments for the Rabo Bank, be so kind to chair this panel. Henk is a big fan of IBM Z , however, also worried as he sees skills on the platform are getting thin. For him, this exercise was also interesting to spot new talents…

The idea was to get the students to create something on z/OS using their own preferred tools and language. We configured a CICS system with a partly configured z/OS Connect Enterprise Edition environment.

The task for this group was to create a couple of REST APIs using the point-and-click tooling that comes with z/OS Connect Enterprise Edition. Once done, they could get crazy using the APIs and start to work on an application. We had Node.js installed on z/OS and, although JAVA was available as well, for this group it was a no-brainer to get going with Node.js.

Using their own tooling (in most cases Microsoft’s Visual Code Studio but also Atom) they were up and running in no time. The supporting staff needed to guide some of them in making clear that Unix System Services is not exactly Linux, but other than that, those youngsters were flying!

At the end of the day 4, groups presented their work and application to the 200 attendees. We were amazed by the quality and the swiftness of the groups that created some cool looking web applications running on a Node.js server on z/OS with CICS in the background. Funny to see that the students themselves were not as excited as we were. For them, it was just another platform. They didn’t notice too many differences once all was set up.

I do realize that having a Node.js application running on z/OS doesn’t make the youngsters hardened Z staff. I also realize that implementing this application is not the same as getting a COBOL application to run in a CICS environment. I get all that.

However, it proofed that the IBM Z system has come a long way in getting more and more ‘just another platform’. There is no need to keep working on 3270 screens if one prefers other modern interfaces. There is no need to keep working in ISPF if one prefers modern IDE. In short, there is no technical reason why an IBM Z should taste, smell or feel different than any other platform.

In the meantime, this event has triggered many interesting projects in several organizations that run IBM Z. My partner in crime, Joris Mertens, is running IBM Z sessions across Europe with the goal to show (not tell) how easy it is to do all kind of cool modern stuff on Z. Interested? Ping me and let’s see if we can get youngsters in your area interested in getting their hands dirty on IBM Z!