IBM Mainframe Forum

jaggz wrote:I strongly feel that assembler is a main pre-requisite for any Mainframe system programmers to understand the Z/OS architecture.

That depends on the definition of System Programmer.

They often install and support software and perhaps other than reading dumps there is no need for assembler for that. Reading dumps is usually more a matter of knowing the format of control blocks.

Many System Programs can be written in a language other than Assembler. Assembler might be necessary if the OS needs to be called directly.

I know this is an old thread. I got here because I was researching emulation (I would call it implementation) of CISC processors by RISC processors as in the AT/370. Apparently Microsoft is developing Windows 10 using an ARM implementation of the Intel x86 instruction set. I am familiar with the AT/370 because I used one for a few months in about 1988.