Modern Mainframe Development

Chapter 7. Other Languages and Programming Techniques

We have focused on the COBOL language. This is definitely the standard for mainframe development. But a myriad of other languages are available. These include C++, C, Java, assembler language, PL/I, REXX, and CLIST.

You do not necessarily need to know all these languages, but having a general understanding of them is a good idea. This will be our focus in this chapter.

We’ll also look at some of the programming techniques to help speed up your development. For this, the focus will be on COBOL.

What Language to Use?

Despite the strong capabilities of COBOL, sometimes you really need to use another language. When making this decision, you should consider a variety of factors:

• Is speed important?

• What are the skills sets of the developer?

• Does your employer have certain preferences?

• Are there functions that are much more efficient in other languages?

It’s also important to have an understanding of the categories of computer languages. For example, most are high-level. This means that they use English-like statements and the structures are fairly straightforward. This is the case with COBOL.

A low-level language, on the other hand, is much closer to the machine and its capabilities. Because of this, the instructions and logic can be much more complex and tedious. The good news is that you will likely not need to use a low-level language. Still, this chapter provides an overview of one of them: assembler.

Older languages ...