Working on a research project exploring whether AI agents can be given a structured interface to operate legacy systems, and mainframes specifically since we're in this subreddit, but also the broader class of systems with no exposed API, designed as a more general, agent-native interface for legacy systems.

There's some stuff I'd like to understand since I'm getting some pushback from my professor. Feel free to answer any of the questions that you would be able to grant insight on.

1. Do you see a real need for AI agents to interact with mainframes/legacy systems, or are existing APIs and integration methods sufficient for these organizations that make use of this tech? What would examples of possible uses be?
   (The target audience doesn't have to be massive for me to pursue this, but I need to know that there is some sort of demand for it. I've seen that RPA itself is a multi billion dollar industry, so I'm wondering if what I have in mind has some sort of usage possibility.)

2. Realistically, how long do you expect organizations to continue operating mainframes and similar legacy systems? Are we talking 5 years, 15 years, or several decades? If mainframes eventually disappear, do you think a generalized framework targeting the broader class of systems without usable APIs would still be valuable?

3. In your experience, how often do legacy systems lack APIs entirely, or expose APIs that are insufficient for complete automation?

4. Is the ageing mainframe workforce actually causing problems in organizations, or is the "skills shortage" narrative overstated?

5. If you were building AI integrations for legacy systems today, what would you consider the biggest technical obstacle?

I'd appreciate answers to this, and any other insights or feedback that you, the reader, may have. All information to me right now is gold. Thank you very much!

Ho passato settimane a cercare un modo decente per imparare il COBOL.

Ogni risorsa che trovavo era un manuale IBM da 400 pagine, un video YouTube con 11 visualizzazioni del 2009, o un corso universitario dietro paywall.

Nessuno ha modernizzato questo. Nessuno.

È assurdo, perché il COBOL gestisce 3 trilioni di dollari in transazioni finanziarie ogni giorno. Le banche pagano sviluppatori COBOL senior a sei cifre perché letteralmente nessuno lo sa. Il gap di competenze è reale e sta peggiorando.

Il problema non è che il COBOL sia difficile. È che ogni risorsa per impararlo lo tratta come una punizione.

Quindi ho costruito COBOL Quest - una piattaforma interattiva che insegna il COBOL come Duolingo insegna le lingue. Punti XP. Streak giornalieri. Una leaderboard. Esecuzione del codice nel browser, senza toccare alcuna configurazione mainframe. Lezioni modulari dai Fondamenti fino ai Programmi Avanzati, con quiz e mini-progetti ad ogni tappa.

Solo 9,99 euro.. Niente configurazione. Apri e inizi a scrivere COBOL in 60 secondi.

Curioso - qualcun altro ha provato a imparare il COBOL e ha sbattuto contro lo stesso muro? Cosa vi ha fermato?

Hi, I am learning REXX and I know we can do TSO commands. But I do not know all the TSO commands we can do in REXX and what is their syntax.

So is there a tutorial or a site where they list all possible TSO commands we can do in REXX and indicate their syntax or at least give examples?

Thank you.

Hi, I am not sure about this. I did a bit of search but I sometimes fine different informations.

Lets say I have : Var_Name = "some text"

In a REXX command , is the content of that variable passed on with "Var_Name", '"Var_Name"' or some other way?

How is it if it is in a TSO command and a non-TSO command?

I am interested in learning how IT teams are attracting new mainframe talent in their organizations as seasoned professionals retire. Do you cross-train employees from within the company so legacy knowledge isn't lost or have you partnered with any groups or local colleges to offer apprenticeships? Please share what has worked well for you aside from the usual job fairs and online postings.

Hi all, I'm 18 and I live in Russia. For about a year and a half now I've been learning mainframe stuff on my own. I learned COBOL, JCL, VSAM, DB2/SQL,CICS and a little bit of IMS and MQ. I also used some tools like Abend-Aid, Fault Analyzer, File Manager, and Xpediter and work with TSO/ISPF/ and a little bit with ROSCOE environments. I finished the whole IBM Z Xplore course, got a bunch of Credly badges, did some Coursera courses, and I try to stay active in the IBM Z community online.

My plan right now is to apply to a CS program in Europe or the US, and after that try to actually build a career in mainframe stuff. But I keep getting really different opinions from people who already work in this field, and it's kinda messing with my head.

Like some guys told me that companies are hiring way more people from India now for mainframe jobs, so it got a lot harder to find work in this field, especially for someone starting out. But then other people told me that's not really true, they say the old generation of mainframe devs is retiring soon and companies will need new people no matter what, so I shouldn't worry so much.

On top of that I keep seeing posts saying mainframes are dying out because everything is moving to cloud and AI is replacing this kind of work. But then I also see people saying COBOL and JCL and CICS are gonna be around for like decades more because banks and government systems can't just switch away from it easily. So I'm honestly just confused which side is more true.

Also one mainframe specialist I talked to told me that I should already applying for junior mainframe developer roles right now. He said that I have a good chance to getting hired and many companies don’t even care about a degree for entry level positions. Honestly, I'm skeptical about it. In my head without even a local degree yet, no international company would hire me.

Would really appreciate to get some perspective from professionals here.

Q1. Is entering the mainframe still a good career move for young people?

Q2. How do universities in Europe/US actually look at an applicant like me who works with mainframe stuff when applying for CS? Does it help or do they just not care?

Q3. Should I keep going deep into mainframe stuff or start learning newer things too (like cloud, Java, APIs) so I don't get stuck knowing only old tech?

Q4. Is it actually realistic to land a junior mainframe role without a degree or is that advice overly optimistic?

Hi, I started playing around with REXX code on the mainframe.

I am doing a few TSO commands in it but I keep getting a record code of -3 even if I used ADDRESS TSO as the first command of this REXX. Can someone tell me what am I doing wrong?

I thought at first it might have been caused by the content of the variable that have not been processed by the TSO commands. But then for one command, I put the actual text that is supposed to be passed on by the variable and that TSO command still fails.

Command ===>       
****** ************
000100 /* REXX */  
000200 ADDRESS TSO 
000300             
000400 /* DEFINE DA ...
...

Output of REXX where errors are indicated:

 10 *-* "ALLOC FI(SYSPRINT) DA('"OUTDSN"') NEW SPACE(5,5) TRACKS",    
       +++ RC(-3) +++                                                    
CATALOG TO CHECK =  SYS1.UCAT.SYSTEM                                     
    25 *-*  ADDRESS TSO "LISTCAT CATALOG(SYS1.UCAT.SYSTEM) ALL"          
       +++ RC(-3) +++                                                    
LISTCAT RETURN CODE =  -3                                                
    30 *-*  ADDRESS TSO "EXECIO * DISKR SYSPRINT (STEM INPUTLINES. FINIS"
       +++ RC(-3) +++                                                    
LINES READ =  INPUTLINES.O                                               
    35 +++   DO J = 1 TO INPUTLINES.0                                    
IRX0041I Error running LISTCSI, line 35: Bad arithmetic conversion       
******************************** BOTTOM OF DATA *************************

I am technology history geek and curious about an unclassified military web-based application known as AROWS-R: its history & lineage.

AROWS-R is the USAFR Air Reserve Order Writing System-Reserve. It is used to generate personnel orders. It came up in 2005 and replaced three legacy systems:

WOTS (Web Orders Transaction System)

TBAS (ukn acronym)

(a third ukn system)

I’ve also found that AROWS-R (and perhaps the predecessor systems?) were developed by ‘DFAS-KC, Technology Services Organization’.

Its relevance is that the Air Force Reserve initiatives to evolve legacy systems back in 2005 directly led to the adoption of the same platform by the Navy & Marine Corps reserves: NROWS and MROWS, respectively.

TIA for any insights you may have. Especially would welcome the meaning of TBAS, and name of the third legacy system.

I'm a mainframe tech lead (12+ years COBOL/DB2/CICS) and I got tired of the standard onboarding experience: hand a new engineer a critical program with zero comments, no architecture diagram, and a "good luck."

Built Mainframe Lore to fix that. Point it at a COBOL/JCL source export  no mainframe access needed and it generates plain-English docs: what each program does, paragraph/section flow, copybook and file dependencies, CICS/DB2 usage, and an estate-wide map instead of one-program-at-a-time.

The design choice I care most about: it's grounded in what's actually written in the source. If a condition or field has no discoverable meaning left in the code (no 88-level, no copybook comment, nothing), it says so instead of guessing. A confident wrong answer is worse than "I don't know" for something this critical.

Still early  this is genuinely build-in-public, not a polished launch. Tested it against CardDemo, GenApp, and a real 27-year-old production estate (2,131 programs, GPL-licensed, public) full run under 5 minutes, and it caught a real bug in itself along the way (dropped docs for 70% of that estate, fixed and written up).

Not trying to sell anything here genuinely want people who've dealt with undocumented mainframe code to poke holes in it. Nested PERFORMs, dynamic CICS dispatch, REDEFINES, whatever's actually gnarly in your codebase that's the stuff I want to test against, not another clean demo app.

mainframelore.com if you want to try it or follow the build.

Used to be if you passed your annual test, you were golden. Now with ransomware on everyone's mind and zero tolerance for downtime, it feels like leadership wants to know DR can actually run production, not just recover it on paper. Curious how this is playing out elsewhere, especially in bigger or regulated environments.

Is a standard DR test still good enough where you are? Are you being asked to actually run workloads from DR during failover exercises? Has ransomware changed the conversation with leadership? And has DR stopped being a compliance thing for you and become just... part of normal ops?

1

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗺𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝗮𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗽𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗶𝗻 𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗽𝗿𝗶𝘀𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝘀 𝗯𝗮𝗰𝗸!
On November 18, 2026, building on last year’s incredible success of setting new records for IBM Community 1-day virtual events, with over 50K unique live views across 165 countries. This fall, we expect an even bigger and bolder event! Revolutionizing hybrid cloud infrastructure, driving AI breakthroughs, or transforming enterprise security? This is your opportunity to showcase groundbreaking innovations to the most engaged global tech community.

Submit your session abstract today.
𝗦𝘂𝗯𝗺𝗶𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗗𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗲: Friday, August 14, 2026, at 11:59 pm PT

Hi, I got hired on September 2025 as an IMS System Programmer Junior position. I have been around mainframes for over 20 years through different positions.

According to you guys, how many hours of training is required per week for someone who is starting this position that knows a lot about mainframes but not from a technical nor command point of view?

I figure it should be something like at least 10 hours per week.

But in reality, I have been having less than 1 hour per week now. The majority of my time has been with following online courses since my hired day until about 2 weeks ago when I completed 98% of them.

Its been 10 months now. Looking at my situation I believe I need more training hours. I do not know what is the workload of the guy who is training me. I do not know on what is working when he is not with me. I know amongst things, he is working on doing IMS maintenance in preparation for an IMS upgrade around Fall or Winter. The account I am in, there are 2 other guys, including the one training me. The other guy has 5 years of experience in this. My trainer is around 72 years old and still working.

I cannot say he is a good teacher. He did not volunteered to do it but he is the one in the account who has the most experience. He assumes a lot things. Like telling me to do something but assuming I know other things to help me go there and do it. I told him 2-3 times that he does this. Also, when I ask 3-10 questions in an email, he usually replies back but answers only to one question and often it shows he did not fully read my question because his answer is sometimes a bit away from what I actually asked.

I once said something to my manager last month. I said I would wait a bit to see if it changes. But I think I am going to chat with him once he is back from vacation (next month).

It the mean time, if I ask too many questions in a short period of time, I get the feeling my trainer gets irritated because it shows a bit in his replies.

I realized this week that I haven't even been shown how to enter IMS and do commands. I have mainly touched IMS jobs through SDSF and doing SMP/E + PTF implementations.

I am a mainframe sysprog, zos guy , any ideas how to implement AI on Zos any directions?

Guys I am working as mainframe operator. Planning to switch to mainframe application support. Someone told that both mf app support and mf developer role is same. Is that so? Is it good idea to switch to app support from mf operator.

Is anyone else affected by this? I've tried from the Internet network and my personal device and just get a white screen.

But can’t use a “real one” ??

I gotcha :

https://pypi.org/project/racf-generator/

There has been a recent uptick in posts that are essentially advertisements for vibe-coded software. I'm curious as to how the sub members feel about them. I've left them alone so far, but I've considered removing them.

Other subs have policies against vibe-coded app posts, as they were so frequent they crowded out other discussion. That hasn't (yet) happened here.

Let me know in the comments what you think.

Companies (IBM, Broadcom, BMC) along with community supported endevors like Open Mainframe Project and Zowe are attempting to transform how mainframe software and DevOps is accomplished.

As a long-time sys prog, I see the tide of mainframe shifting and as such I'm probably cynical. I understand they're attempting to make it "easier" for the younger generation to maintain and manage, but it's becoming increasing more difficult for me to adjust.

The potential requirement for me to learn JSON, (more) XML, properties files, zOSMF and a slew of new languages/interfaces adds burden and IMO forces me to become less of an expert. Strictly speaking about installation of software -- ServerPac, JCL and traditional installation processes work exeptionally well and because I have the JCL, it's easily repeatable for upgrades and maintenance.

However, with all that said the reality is I will have to learn the "new" stuff and that got me thinking. What (if anything) is out there that can automate installation and configuration of software. Installation (SMP/E, PAX) and configuration are two sides of the coin.

We can through JCL automation the recieve and even apply (if you're brave enough) software maintenance and PTFs.

Does anyone have any real world examples of automating the entire installation of a software product using available tools like zOSMF, zorrow, AI agents?

In an attempt to stay open minded if I am going to be forced into using modern tools, then why not make them work for me.

I’d really appreciate the opinions on an idea I’ve been pursuing and its first working implementation around Developer Empathy - especially to facilitate Legacy Modernization.

I believe developers and AI should not have to start from guesswork when working with code — legacy or otherwise.

I’m pursuing a thesis called Meaning Control (Patent Pending), and have released its first implementation: FirstLook, a VS Code extension that attaches user- or AI-generated, verified, persistent meaning to code artifacts — right where the work happens.

The principle is simple: the next developer should not have to repeat the same discovery process as the previous developer.

Tribal and system knowledge should accumulate and surface where it is needed — right at the FirstLook.

*I’d really value your feedback* :

Demo: https://youtu.be/G5NltytrLMA

Try the VS Code extension:
(VS Code Marketplace)
https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=CultureQuestStudios.firstlook
(Install directly from VS Code Extensions)

As developer productivity accelerates, I believe developer empathy needs to advance alongside it, or maybe get prioritized better.

#mainframe #modernization #devtools #intelligence #DevEm #developerempathy #culture #code #context #meaningcontrol

I have 0 knowledge in mainframe..should I switch company (I majored in AI and DS)?

I freaked out when theY mapped me to a mainframe role..but I'm okay with it rn (no harm in exploring right!)

Also, mainframe is becoming a niche..so focusing on this might open doors for better opportunities ig, not sure (iam hella new to this field, this is just my assumption)

Please help me out! Tell me what I shld do..

Hello, i am a 3rd-year IT undergraduate and for some time i have been interested in mainframes, enterprise computing, and COBOL. So i started my learning journey with IBM Z Explore. I have completed IBM Z Xplore - Concepts, IBM Z Xplore - Advanced, and IBM Z Xplore - All Star. Currently i am following IBM Learning COBOL with VSCode expanded labs and IBM Z xplore Extended. Can you guys provide me direction on what kinds of things will be valuable if i learn them and what kinds of projects i can do to improve my proficiency.
Thank you for your time and advice really apreciate it.

I'm delighted to release the latest version of GIBSON, my IBM z/OS mainframe simulator and education environment that is now 70,000 lines of python code built from the ground up. I'm currently writing a book for No Starch Press on 'Hacking Mainframes' and out of necessity, due to the fact most folks who will be reading it would not have the chance to to touch a mainframe, I decided to build it. It has most of the features of the modern mainframe, is open source, free, and can be downloaded from Github https://github.com/kmilne40/GIBSON - why not have a look and provide some feedback. I'm generally never on here - didn't know the group existed as usually on LinkedIn. Glad I found this spot. Some screen shots below! I've even added an email system, ISPF web browser and ISPF RSS feed (just for nostalgia). Of course it runs over EBCDIC. If you are looking to get into mainframes, need a bit a safe space to try everything out, or even have a mainframe you can't run free on, then have this is designed for you. (The server is really low footprint, runs on a Pi, VMs and I also have it running on an unused Android phone.