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From: "Stephen Fuld" <SFuld@alumni.cmu.edu.invalid>
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: The Design of Design
Date: Tue, 7 May 2024 06:19:18 -0000 (UTC)
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Tim Rentsch wrote:

> "Stephen Fuld" <SFuld@alumni.cmu.edu.invalid> writes:
 

snip


> 
> >> The biggest fault of JCL is that it
> >> is trying to solve the wrong problem.
> > 
> > What problem was it trying to solve and what was the "right"
> > problem?
> 
> The problem it was trying to solve is contained in its name:  Job
> Control Language.  It tacitly accepted the non-interactive batch
> model for what it needed to address.

You may be right, but correct me if I am wrong, there was no
non-interactive model in the mid 1960s when JCL was devised.  They
didn't address it because they couldn't forcast (obviouslyincorrectly),
that it would be a problem to solve.



> The problem that was in need of addressing is interactive use.  I
> think there are two reasons why JCL was so poor at that.  One is
> that they knew that teleprocessing would be important, but they
> tried to cram it into the batch processing model, rather than
> understanding a more interactive work style.  The second reason is
> that the culture at IBM, at least at that time, never understood the
> idea that using computers can be (and should be) easy and fun.  The
> B in IBM is Business, and Business isn't supposed to be fun.  And I
> think that's part of why JCL was not viewed (at IBM) as a failure,
> because their Business customers didn't mind.  Needless to say, I am
> speculating, but for what it's worth those are my speculations.


Fair enough.  A couple of comments.  By the time TSO/360 came out,in
IIRC the early 1970s, they were already committed to JCL.  TSO ran as a
batch job on top of the OS, and handled swapping, etc.itself within the
region allocated to TSO within the OS.  It was a disaster.  Of course
this was later addressed by unifying TSO into the OS, but that couldn't
happen until the S/370s (except the 155 and 165) and virtual memory.
But the legacy of two control languages was already set by then.

As for "fun". I agree that IBM didn't think of computers as fun, but
there were plenty of reasons to support interactive terminals for
purely business reasons, a major one being programmer productivity in
developing business applications.





-- 
 - Stephen Fuld 
(e-mail address disguised to prevent spam)