zOS JCL (Job Control Language)
Chapter One
INTRODUCTION
1.1 THE SHOCK OF JCL
Your first use of JCL (Job Control Language) will be a shock. No doubt you
have used personal computers costing $500 or $1,000 that had wonderfully
human-engineered software, giving you an expectation of how easy it is to
use a computer. Now, as you use a computer costing several million dollars,
you may feel like a waif in a Dickens story standing in the shadow of a massive
mainframe computer saying meekly, "Please, sir, may I run my job?" It
will come as a shock that its software is not wonderfully human engineered.
The hardware and software design of large IBM mainframe computers
date back to the days when Kennedy was president. JCL is a language that
may be older than you are. It was designed at a time when user-friendliness
was not even a gleam in the eye of its designers. This is easily demonstrated
by taking the simple task of copying a file and contrasting how it is done
through JCL with how it is done on the most popular personal computer
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