I think my school did me a disservice in teaching their IBM mainframes curriculum. I’ll say upfront that the schooling itself was good. However, my school mainframe experience taught me that you interacted with the mainframe by punching cards and submitting jobs to a reader queue. Debugging was strictly by looking at greenbar listings. When I was exposed to the DEC PDP-11 minicomputer and saw I could interactively type/run a program into a online terminal. I thought the hell with punching cards then waiting till the computer operator decided to run my job…the minicomputer is for me. So that is the job I sought after and found. That is how I began my computer career.
My schooling began in the late 1970s. According to Wikipedia TSO was introduced in 1971. And an early version of ISPF was called SPF (Structured Programming Facility) and introduced in 1974. So something more modern was available! I just was never told about it. I wouldn’t go so far as to say what I was taught was obsolete because I have IBM system/360 Operating System manuals dating from 1974. One of these manuals (GS28-6646-7) specifically mentions TSO.
In my first job after school, I started as a computer operator in the PDP-11/70 computer room. Moved into programming then eventually became the PDP-11s System programmer. After a few years my company outgrew the PDP and we moved to an IBM running VSE…MVS’s little brother. I got to write COBOL and Assembler programs as a programmer. I got into Assembler rather quickly writing a program to process the tape of a long distance machine. Later I was sent to CICS school. I was trained as a VM/VSE Systems Programmer. And later became the Database administrator (ADABAS) too. Because of my MVT programming classes I had no problem adapting to the mainframe world. Years later because of emulation I would see that MVT was very similar to MVS. And later when I took a IBM z/OS course, I found it was very close to MVS. So my school training was good.
I just wish someone would have explained that the way we were interacting with the mainframe was heading out the door, and there were newer more advanced ways which were becoming common. I’m sure I would today but I never thought to ask back then. And I guess, what school wants to admit, much of what we teach will be obsolete soon. At the same time it was cool to be taught old school.
Also as a tutor I worked both the mainframe side and the minicomputer (PDP) side, which was right across the hall. The mainframe is where most of the core computer curriculum was centered. The minicomputer classes were of more of a general nature where both computer and non computer majors would fulfill a computer requirement. There were usually a couple people working on the mainframe side. The mainframe side mostly consisted of receiving/tearing/distributing listings to student mailboxes (which looked like PO boxes in a mail facility). I never actually saw or asked to see the mainframe, which today blows my mind. On the other hand working on the minicomputer (PDP 11) side I also “operated” the PDP. Working by myself on the weekend I started (bootstrapped) and shutdown the PDP. I worked both sides of the hall on the weekend which kept me busy.