Mainframe Assembler Programming

By Bill Qualls and William Qualls

Master the skills you need to take advantage of the booming market for mainframe programmers. Programmers acknowledge that understanding the internals of the machine helps them write more efficient code in cobol, C, and other high-level languages. Whether you are working on a Year 2000 team or setting up an e-commerce application, this book gets you up and running with the skills you'll need to retrofit systems and move mainframe programs into the 21st century. Designed to build skills rapidly and intuitively, Mainframe Assembler Programming: * Teaches you how to program mainframe Assembler on your PC * Starts you programming usable code from day 1, page 1 * Structures all lessons around real-world business applications * Uses the same five data sets throughout, so you get progressively more sophisticated results as you learn. On the enclosed disk you'll find: * PC/370-lets you program and execute mainframe Assembler on your PC * Source code for all examples from the book A rapid introduction or a refresher for experienced programmers, Mainframe Assembler Programming gives you the know-how you need to program for productivity and quality in the mainframe environment.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0471249939
• ISBN13: 9780471249931
• Release Date: February 1998
• Publisher: Wiley
• Length: 576 Pages
• Weight: 2.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 7.4" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

The best introduction to BAL I've found

After struggling for weeks in a local community college online class using Peter Abel's Programming Assembler Language book with the PC370 IBM370 emulator, I happened upon a link to Bill Quall's excellent book. It is extremely readable, has excellent, clearly documented & complete programs to illustrate concepts, and very educational end of chapter quizzes with answers in the back. Best of all, it is written specifically to work with Don Higgin's PC370 emulator (the differences are few, but important). I doubt I would have passed the class without this book (due to lack of applicable information in the resources I had prior to finding this book). The only thing I could come up with (and it is only a caution, not a true negative) is that although the book is 563 pages, it does not go as far as I would like. I would love to have a volume 2 by the same author which describes use of multiple CSECT programs and MACRO writing (and whatever else I don't know I'm missing). Another caution: I paid $25 or so for a used copy and now the only copy I see online is offered at $99 (used), so I might look around a bit or try to plow through the IBM Principles of Operations (free online) unless I absolutely needed to get up to speed quickly for class or work. Overall, I cannot praise the writing style and educational value of this book highly enough, especially for a newbie to mainframe assembly programming (don't think it will be of much use to those wanting to learn Intel assembly!)

Good book for students and self study

This book is excellent for students, or for someone like me who had to get into mainframe assembler in a hurry. I was able to read the book in about 4 hours, and doing the examples in the book helped lock the concepts into my mind. I would like to see a section with more information on the mainframe and additional material on more advanced subjects. Some preparation on the kinds of assembler errors to expect from the mainframe would be nice too.

Excellent for learning and understanding mainframe assembler

This is a very good book for someone who is new to assembler, but is also appropriate for someone familiar with an assembler language who wishes to learn mainframe assembler. Not only does this book describe the assembler instructions, but it explains important bit-level concepts and the use of structured programming techniques with assembler. The book begins with an example of a one-instruction assembler program for writing a message to the console. As new instructions are introduced, practical examples of their use are presented and explained. Each chapter ends with a series of exercises. The first exercise is always a set of True/False questions (with answers in the back of the book). The remaining exercises are simple programming problems. Included with this book is a copy of a freeware application for simulating a mainframe assembler in DOS. There is also an appendix which describes the steps that are needed on a mainframe to run mainframe assembler programs that were created on the PC. If your goal is to learn to write mainframe assembler programs, then I don't see how you could miss with this book.