>> They do give you ssh access to the Unix-compatibility environment though so maybe it's possible to edit files using Tramp in Emacs locally.
It's a UNIX shell. You can always use ed :)
It's a UNIX shell. You can always use ed :)
You need to first edit the file, fine, you can use vi. Then you need to go into ISPF (or TSO) on a 3270 terminal to submit the batch job that compiles the code (and possible runs it). Then you need to go into SDSF to view the results of the compilation.
Back in the 70's this was an acceptable way of working, but not what a modern programmer would expect.
On the MVS 3.8j side, I can submit a job directly via the virtual card reader and then read the results directly from the printer and feed it into Emacs. That's the most efficient way to work with Hercules but you'll be stuck with a very old version of Cobol.
Well, I don't know how you can avoid that part, i.e. submitting a batch job and looking at the results separately. SuperPaintMan describes an alternative but I'm not sure how this works. When I was working on a mainframe, it was like you say, except I couldn't edit files remotely with vi - because big financial corporation security :)
To be fair, I didn't try. There probably was a way. I didn't mind the editor I had on ISDF, EZY editor. The only annoying thing was that, if I understand this correctly, EBCDIC doesn't have an end-of-line character so I couldn't just control-End to go to the end of a line, I had to use the arrow keys or touch the mouse (yuck!).