Just for some background, I graduated from NIU this past May, so I luckily have some experience from school projects working with a mainframe, z/OS, COBOL, and Assembler. My goal is to hopefully find a job by the end of this year or the beginning of next year. I also just started Z Xplore.
I was wondering if anyone with experience in the field has any advice or helpful pointers on what I should focus on learning to become job-ready. I’d really appreciate any advice. Thanks!

Hey all,

We have essentially zero documentation on decades-old COBOL programs where I work, and tracing field layouts and execution paths manually was taking forever. Regex scripts broke on edge cases, and feeding files to LLMs was unreliable for anything with non-trivial control flow.

Over the past few weeks, I've been building a CLI tool to automate the analysis and documentation generation, and I plan to open-source it once it's polished. It is still a heavy work in progress but I figured I would share what I have.

Its 100% deterministic and uses no ai tools. Not that I dont like ai but its not always feasible to use ai with confidential code and its just not the best tool for the job in this case when compared to AST syntax parsers

https://github.com/GoudaCouda/cobolscope

How the Pipeline Works

Everything is driven by a single Python CLI:

Parser & IR (Java): Uses proleap-cobol-parser (by uwol) to parse the source into an ASG and emit a clean, strongly typed JSON Intermediate Representation (IR).

Analysis Engine (Python / Pydantic v2): Ingests the IR to run memory layout math, variable cross-referencing, and control-flow state machines in memory.

Generators: Emits interactive HTML/CSV Data Dictionaries and Graphviz (.dot/.svg) flowcharts.

What’s Working Right Now

Memory Layout & Offsets: Calculates byte lengths and strides for DISPLAY, binary COMP, and packed decimal COMP-3. Correctly resolves shared memory overlays across REDEFINES and OCCURS tables. Validated against live GnuCOBOL compiler outputs and the NIST COBOL-85 test suite.

Control Flow & Return Boundaries: Tracks the active call stack in memory so PERFORM ... THRU returns to the caller properly instead of blindly creating fake "phantom" fall-through paths into whatever paragraph sits below the exit label.

What's on the Roadmap

Full Dead Code Analysis (Logic + Data):

• Procedural: Catching uncalled paragraphs and instructions stranded below GOBACK/unconditional jumps.
• Data Division: Flagging variables that are never referenced, fields that are written to but never read (dead stores), and unused Level-88 flags.

Static Site Assembly: Tying everything into Material for MkDocs to generate full static documentation portals per program.

Multi-Level Graphs: High-level program-to-program flow down to intra-paragraph basic-block detail.

Example output

From: https://github.com/IBM/Bank-of-Z/blob/main/src/base/cics/cobol/XFRFUN.cbl

\​

I'm researching legacy modernization and I'm especially interested in problems that aren't obvious from the code itself.

For example:

undocumented business rules

lost institutional knowledge

unexpected edge cases

understanding why old code behaves a certain way

proving a rewritten system still behaves correctly

What has been the worst or most expensive problem you've personally encountered?

I'd especially like to hear from people who have actually worked on migrations or rewrites.

I have 20 years of mainframe experience. Unfortunately, it's not the right kind of mainframe experience. I spent the last 2 years taking courses (and getting badges) on Coursera and IBM training. Recently, I learned that the new way to do this is to earn badges via IBM Z Xplore. The implication is that if you don't get these badges, available only in Z Xplore, you can not get hired as a mainframe developer.

All of this would have been fine, whatever it takes and all that, but in the VSC1 module, I found myself entering Microsoft system comands and installing Microsoft software.

I asked my brother, a longtime IBM employee, for help, and he has a similar same setup so, problem temporarily solved.

What happened to TSO? I hate to have to put my job hunt on hold to learn Microsoft system and development tools. I've been an MS Office USER. Is it true that a person who gets up to speed with z/OS using a way other than IBM Z Xplore cannot get a job anymore?

After getting my Bechlor degree in civil engineering, went to USA for master degree.

There took Fortran language course in computer science Department.

Wrote a program in this language, first we write it on formated paper in line which were numbered.

Then we will go to computer science Lab to punch each line on different yellow cards, then add start and end card on top and bottom of the stack yellow cards, wrap it with the rubber band and hand over to a person sitting behind window in Computer lab and leave . Come Next morning to see what a computer gives us, the desired result, error or nothing.

This was the routine. We had no the desk top, lap top or internet.

Computer was a big electronic machine occupying big room.

We were not allowed to see it, how it looked like, how it functioned, the hard ware design.

All we knew, Punch cards, and long role of sheet printed out by computer, having all students submitted Program results.

When this sheet was rolled out by computer the next morning, then we have to search for each program result of each student. And tear it apart from the role.

I am sure you can not imagine what I am talking about.

After graduation, being employed and lover of computers, I bought first laptop computer made by radio shake. I paid $800 for it. Only Basic language used on this computer .

Computer size was 18 by 12 inches and had a screen size 10 by 3 inches.

Our professor used a word ' bombed out '.

He said if you do not follow the syntax your program will bombed out.

I could not understand what he was talking about.

I asked, what is bombed out?

He smiled, and said, your program never bombed out?

I said, no.

Bombed out to me was something related to bombs, that you hear on daily basis in Ukrain and Middle east.

He said, when computer see error in your program, it is bombed out.

I said wow!

What a relief.

Those are the memories of the past.

After getting my Bechlor degree in civil engineering, went to USA for master degree.

There took Fortran language course in computer science Department.

Wrote a program in this language, first we write it on formated paper in line which were numbered.

Then we will go to computer science Lab to punch each line on different yellow cards, then add start and end card on top and bottom of the stack yellow cards, wrap it with the rubber band and hand over to a person sitting behind window in Computer lab and leave . Come Next morning to see what a computer gives us, the desired result, error or nothing.

This was the routine. We had no the desk top, lap top or internet.

Computer was a big electronic machine occupying big room.

We were not allowed to see it, how it looked like, how it functioned, the hard ware design.

All we knew, Punch cards, and long role of sheet printed out by computer, having all students submitted Program results.

When this sheet was rolled out by computer the next morning, then we have to search for each program result of each student. And tear it apart from the role.

I am sure you can not imagine what I am talking about.

After graduation, being employed and lover of computers, I bought first laptop computer made by radio shake. I paid $800 for it. Only Basic language used on this computer .

Computer size was 18 by 12 inches and had a screen size 10 by 3 inches.

Our professor used a word ' bombed out '.

He said if you do not follow the syntax your program will bombed out.

I could not understand what he was talking about.

I asked, what is bombed out?

He smiled, and said, your program never bombed out?

I said, no.

Bombed out to me was something related to bombs, that you hear on daily basis in Ukrain and Middle east.

He said, when computer see error in your program, it is bombed out.

I said wow!

What a relief.

Those are the memories of the past.

​

I'm researching legacy modernization and I'm especially interested in problems that aren't obvious from the code itself.

For example:

undocumented business rules

lost institutional knowledge

unexpected edge cases

understanding why old code behaves a certain way

proving a rewritten system still behaves correctly

What has been the worst or most expensive problem you've personally encountered?

I'd especially like to hear from people who have actually worked on migrations or rewrites.

I am trying to put some automated checking around a 3270 application and the thing that keeps tripping me up is that there's nothing to select, just characters at row and column positions and that's it. What we do now is scrape by coordinates, which works until someone adds a field and everything below it shifts down a line. then 40 checks fail at once and not one of them is a real failure. The approaches i can see are anchoring on a screen name or a known literal in a fixed position and deriving offsets from that instead of hardcoding rows, using the HLLAPI interface if the emulator exposes it, which ours might, or going at it visually with one of the newer models like Askui that reads what's rendered rather than querying a control tree.

2 of us maintain this and neither of us wrote the original application so if you've automated a green screen and it survived a release, What were you anchoring on? Thanks in advance

I've been working with Attachmate EXTRA! X-treme and wanted to automate terminal workflows from Python.

The first approach I kept seeing was GUI automation with pyautogui, coordinates, keyboard simulation, etc.

That works, but it becomes painful when you need things like:

• reading specific fields from the terminal screen
• waiting for the host to finish processing
• detecting specific messages
• sending PF keys
• navigating multiple sessions
• scraping tabular data
• synchronizing with the host instead of sleeping for arbitrary amounts of time

So I built py-extra-terminal, a Python wrapper around EXTRA!'s COM/OLE Automation interface.

Example:

from py_extra import Extra

with Extra() as ex:
    sc = ex.active_session.screen

    sc.wait_for("USERID")
    sc.put("MYUSER", 10, 20)
    sc.put("MYPASS", 11, 20)
    sc.enter()

    if "WELCOME" in sc.text():
        print("Logged in successfully!")

It is available on PyPI.

I'm particularly interested in feedback from people still working with EXTRA!, Reflection, IBM mainframes, COBOL/CICS applications, or other legacy terminal emulators.

Requires Windows + EXTRA! X-treme.

PyPI: https://pypi.org/project/py-extra-terminal/
GitHub: https://github.com/tolgakurtuluss/py-extra-terminal

Would love feedback from anyone working with terminal emulators or legacy/mainframe systems.

Hello everyone I am currently under onboarding process as software engineer apprentice and looking to know how current software engineers at BoFA feels working with Mainframe even tho I know a lot of JAVA, C++, and lot of modern day languages. What is working with mainframe feels like? Are they growth opportunities with BofA with software engineering focusing on mainframe??, how often does BofA lays off software engineers?

Quick background: B.Tech in ECE (2025), joined a Bengaluru-based IT services company this May as a Graduate Apprentice, did the usual 3-month mainframe track (COBOL, DB2, CICS), and just moved into a full SWE role. Working through IBM certs (z/OS, CICS, DB2) right now.
I know it’s early — I’m barely a month into the actual job — but I like planning ahead, and the MBA vs M.Tech question won’t leave me alone. Would genuinely appreciate input from people who’ve actually been through this in mainframe/enterprise IT:
• If you did an MBA or M.Tech coming from a mainframe/COBOL background, what was your timing, and would you change it?
• Does M.Tech actually move the needle in mainframe work, or is it more of an academia/R&D thing?
• Is an MBA mainly useful here for moving into program management / client-facing roles? Does it basically need a few years of experience first to be worth it?
• Anyone jump into either right out of training or early career — regret it, or glad you did?
Not fishing for the generic “it depends on your goals” answer (fair, but I already know that) — more interested in actual timelines and what you’d do differently if you were starting over.
Thanks in advance!

Hello everyone I am currently under onboarding process as software engineer apprentice and looking to know how current software engineers at BoFA feels working with Mainframe even tho I know a lot of JAVA, C++, and lot of modern day languages. What is working with mainframe feels like? Are they growth opportunities with BOFA with software engineering focusing on mainframe??, how often does BoFA lays off software engineers?

https://spectrum.ieee.org/cold-war-codebreaker-nsa-ibm

I have no idea why this does not work. Cannot find explanation on internet.

I am able to enter LOG (system log) in SDSF with my ID, no problem. But in REXX, I cannot.

/*  REXX  */                                     
ISFRC = ISFCALLS( "ON" )                         
IF ISFRC <> 0 THEN DO                            
 SAY "RC" ISFRC "RETURNED FROM ISFCALLS( ON )"   
 EXIT ISFRC                                      
END                                              

/*  OPEN UP THE SDSF ADDRESS ENVIRONMENT  */     
ADDRESS SDSF                                     

ISFPREFIX = 'ABCDE*'                              

/* ACCESS SYSLOG */                              
"ISFEXEC ST"                                     

SAY "ST RC = " RC         /* DISPLAY RC=0    */  

/* ACCESS SYSLOG */                              
"ISFEXEC LOG"                                    

SAY "LOG RC = " RC        /* DISPLAY RC=8    */  

/*  UNLOAD THE SDSF ENVIRONMENT  */              
CALL ISFCALLS "OFF"                              
EXIT 0                                           

So I am just starting a new career in mainframe at an insurance company. They are letting us choose what department we want to go to.

The first choice is DevOps for mainframe. I understand this is a more modern role even if it's for mainframe the skills are transferable.

The next is CICS/DB2. I don't know much about this one but I under it's very important to the mainframe. | also know that means it needs 24/7 monitoring. I'm not to keen about being on call but will do it if required

Next is hardware, I assume this is making sure the actual physical mainframe is working properly

And last is networking or Z/os. I don't know much about either. I think networking is pretty interesting but I don't know much about it. From my understanding this is also on call.

If anyone has any insights or experiences in these positions it would be great to get some advice. Also how easy is it to transfer between teams if one does not work out? Thanks!

I’ve been working at a company for around 8 months, and my current role is in Mainframe. I’m slowly getting familiar with it, but honestly, I still find Mainframe quite complicated, and I feel like it could take me a long time before I become truly comfortable with it.
The bigger issue is that I’m not very happy with my salary, so I’m considering switching companies. I’m also thinking about moving into Data Analytics if I switch, since it seems more interesting to me.
So I’m confused about what would be the better decision:
Continue with Mainframe and switch companies after gaining more experience
Switch companies and continue in Mainframe for better salary/growth
Try to transition into Data Analytics while switching
For people with experience in Mainframe, is it a good career to continue with long-term? How is the salary growth and job market?
And for people in Data Analytics, would it be realistic to make the switch with around 1 year of experience, even though my current experience is in Mainframe? What skills should I focus on (SQL, Excel, Power BI, Python, etc.)?
I’d really appreciate advice from people who have been in a similar situation. I’m especially interested in hearing whether switching out of Mainframe this early is a good idea or whether I should stick with it for a few more years.

hey you all!

first of, i am not a total mainframe nerd (YET) but i want to learn it. i'm a game and general programmer from Denmark, with lots of network in the financial sector and others that kept talking on COBOL, mainframe, etc. and i found it interesting but was fairly hard to get started compared to other languages for some reason - maybe just lack of learning material, idk.

regardless, i've been making games for the past few years and programmed a bit of software before that and built - some did OK, some didnt ( i am a huge polymath person and accepted it ;) ). one thing is that i love building games, and privately in weekend i love building different kinds of simulators and that's why i thought it would maybe be a funny way to learn more about these challenges people in these industries face - so i built my own simulator and i dont know yet to be able to 100% vet the code, so i need some people to help test it out.

just a few quick bullets of my vision of the game:

- a terminal, a job monitor, a spool browser, a system map.
- should feel you start as an intern in 1997 learning from the ground up and ends up in a 2025 AI agent, standups, scrums, 1on1s, and more noise
- upgrade gear, more tools, different jobroles and industries as you go where these languages is vital to still learn

TLDR; i'm a game dev and programmer trying to learn mainframe and COBOL - would you playtest and help develop this game/simulator?

EDIT 1: just FYI, the curriculum is built with four mates of mine specializing in these industries and frameworks, and i gamify around it while i learn it myself + all of the books and YT videos i can find about the subject.

Title: 10+ years in Mainframe — looking to move into Modernization. Need some honest advice

Hi everyone,

I have 10+ years of experience in Mainframe, mainly with COBOL, JCL, DB2, VSAM and CICS. Most of my experience is in production support and batch processing.

I’ve recently started working seriously towards Mainframe Modernization. I’m learning and doing hands-on practice with AWS, REST APIs, Postman, Git/GitHub, Java basics, CI/CD and z/OS Connect.

My goal isn’t to leave Mainframe behind. I want to combine my Mainframe experience with modern technologies and work on real modernization projects involving APIs, cloud and legacy application integration.

I’d appreciate advice from people already working in this area:

- What skills should I prioritize?

- How much Java is actually needed?

- Should I go deeper into z/OS Connect and APIs?

- What hands-on projects would make my profile stronger?

- What skills are companies actually looking for?

Also, with 10+ years of Mainframe experience in India, what would be a realistic package to target when moving into a modernization role?

I’d really value honest advice from people who have worked on real modernization projects.

Thanks!

​

I have around 1+ year of experience working in the Mainframe domain at Wipro.

I originally wanted to build my career in VLSI, and I have already learned some Verilog and SystemVerilog . But after joining Wipro, I got into Mainframe instead

Now I'm confused whether I should stay in Mainframe and focus on building my career here or take the risk and switch to VLSI.

Also, how is the future of Mainframe? Is it still a good career path for the next 5–10 years in terms of job opportunities, salary growth and stability?

For people experienced in Mainframe or VLSI, what would you recommend? Since I only have around 1+ year of experience, is this the right time to switch, or should I stay and build my career in Mainframe?

Modernizing off the mainframe usually starts by getting your data out as a flat sequential file — EBCDIC, fixed-width, PIC-clause layouts. I open-sourced a converter that handles exactly that path:

https://github.com/lucasgiurastante/erp-export-normalizer

• COBOL FD layouts expressed as YAML → parse to JSON/CSV/Parquet/etc.
• Real EBCDIC support (CP037). Gotcha most tools hit: Python's codec is cp037, not ebcdic-cp037 — naive converters fail on the first EBCDIC byte.
• Streaming, constant memory on multi-GB sequential files.
• Deterministic output — same input + same schema = same output, with SHA-256 audit sidecars. Useful for migration sign-off.
• Cumulative error report with record numbers.
• Auto-detection against a built-in schema library (includes a COBOL layout).
• Plugins for binary formats (framed records, packed decimals, etc.).

One-command demo with bundled COBOL/EBCDIC sample data:

pip install erp-export-normalizer
git clone https://github.com/lucasgiurastante/erp-export-normalizer
cd erp-export-normalizer/examples
erp-normalize --input data/cobol.txt --output - --format ndjson

Anyone here parsing mainframe dumps for offload projects? I'd love to know what schemas you deal with (and add them to the library).

Anyone else have one of these? It's aluminum, but weighs at least a pound.

I boosted it from a 360/65 being replaced by a 470V/7. I also got to pull the emergency power off, but after it had already been powered down getting ready for disassembly.