Igor Todorovski

Unlocking the Power of the Mainframe: Developing modern applications on z/OS

What if you could run Git, Bash, and your favorite open-source tools on a mainframe? Discover the modern, high-performance development environment now thriving on z/OS.

Unlocking the Power of the Mainframe: Developing modern applications on z/OS
#1about 3 minutes

Debunking common myths about mainframe computing

Modern mainframes offer cost-effectiveness, continuous evolution with AI and quantum-safe hardware, and familiar development environments like Unix.

#2about 6 minutes

Understanding the core pillars of z/OS reliability

The platform's dominance in critical industries is built on robust security, high-performance I/O, and near-zero downtime through hardware redundancy.

#3about 5 minutes

Bridging the open source gap on z/OS

The z/OS Open Tools initiative was created to port essential developer tools like Git, Bash, and Curl, making the platform more accessible.

#4about 4 minutes

Key technical differences between z/OS and Linux

Porting software requires understanding differences in hardware architecture, C runtime libraries, file systems, and character encoding like EBCDIC vs ASCII.

#5about 4 minutes

Strategies for handling EBCDIC and ASCII encoding

Developers can build applications in ASCII mode and use file tagging for automatic character conversion, with a helper library for complex cases.

#6about 2 minutes

Building and maintaining ports with a unified framework

The z/open-build framework simplifies the process of building and installing numerous open source tools by managing dependencies and patches.

#7about 4 minutes

Getting involved and learning more about z/OS

Community members can gain access to a z/OS system for development and contribute to porting efforts through the GitHub organization.

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