[lokedhs]

You can actually ssh into it and use vi. That's probably the easiest way to do it. However, the edit-compile-test cycle is somewhat complicated.

You need to first edit the file, fine, you can use vi. Then you need to go into ISPF (or TSO) on a 3270 terminal to submit the batch job that compiles the code (and possible runs it). Then you need to go into SDSF to view the results of the compilation.

Back in the 70's this was an acceptable way of working, but not what a modern programmer would expect.

[SuperPaintMan]

You can submit jobs to JES2 from USS with a shell script. Easiest way I found was to fuse-mount a working directory, edit everything with VSCode/Vim With COBOL Extensions and have two shells, one constantly reading the output data file and another for submitting job cards.

[lokedhs]

Thanks for the information. I assume actual mainframe developers do these things. But can you do that from the environment provided to me you by master the mainframe?

On the MVS 3.8j side, I can submit a job directly via the virtual card reader and then read the results directly from the printer and feed it into Emacs. That's the most efficient way to work with Hercules but you'll be stuck with a very old version of Cobol.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

>> You need to first edit the file, fine, you can use vi. Then you need to go into ISPF (or TSO) on a 3270 terminal to submit the batch job that compiles the code (and possible runs it). Then you need to go into SDSF to view the results of the compilation.

Well, I don't know how you can avoid that part, i.e. submitting a batch job and looking at the results separately. SuperPaintMan describes an alternative but I'm not sure how this works. When I was working on a mainframe, it was like you say, except I couldn't edit files remotely with vi - because big financial corporation security :)

To be fair, I didn't try. There probably was a way. I didn't mind the editor I had on ISDF, EZY editor. The only annoying thing was that, if I understand this correctly, EBCDIC doesn't have an end-of-line character so I couldn't just control-End to go to the end of a line, I had to use the arrow keys or touch the mouse (yuck!).

[selimthegrim]

This sounds like university HPC today