IBM Corp is so proud of its new High Level Assembler/MVS, VM and VSE, announced only last month (CI No 1,921) that it put out a special announcement last week to say that the thing is available. It claims that the new implementation of the low-level language brings new speed, accuracy and efficiency to one of the oldest, but most critical, programming-language technologies used by tens of thousands of customers worldwide and there we were thinking that people tended to use C these days. The thinking is right of course – as IBM points out, although it was introduced in the 1950s, Assembler – one of the first instances of IBM seizing a generic industry term, capitalising it and claiming it for an IBM product – the language helps programmers to create applications that run with maximum efficiency – but judging by the amount of memory demanded by the meanest of desktop applications these days, nobody writes programs like that any more. But they do, they do: IBM says that thousands of companies still use the reliable Assembler language as the bedrock of many of their key computer applications, adding that like old-style UK Daily Telegraph and Daily Express readers, they are dying off – the number of programmers trained in Assembler is shrinking, leaving customers worried about the viability of their applications and putting increased work pressures on skilled Assembler programmers, IBM says. The new High Level Assembler is designed to alleviate both those situations by delivering greatly enhanced and improved support for these programmers. It increases their productivity and maximises the value of their skills, says IBM, which suggests that, like Systems Application Architecture, the product is something that IBM should have dreamed up 15 years ago. Nevertheless, the company has a citation: We expect this to improve our productivity enormously, said David Weintraub of the Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory. We’re especially excited by the additional functions of the new release. IBM claims that the many features of the new High Level Assembler enable more rapid and reliable development of new applications and give customers the ability to change applications with greater assurance of stability and quality as their business needs change. It gives programmers means of accessing tools such as librarians and debuggers, which give greater control over applications and reduce the number of errors before they are introduced into the system. Extensive support for routine maintenance tasks such as cross referencing and tracking the use of data spares programmers time spent on routine chores and mechanical details – now the company comes out with it! The new release is claimed to offer improved, expanded and added diagnostics to help programmers spot and correct errors before they become part of the software portfolio; information that provides at-a-glance summaries of key elements of the system, including file origin and control functions; and language enhancements that improve usability, reliability and efficiency. It became available on Friday in the US and costs from $28 to $991 a month depending on processor used.
