The Class of 1994

How many of you remember the VM/ESA handbooks from the J. Ranade IBM Series championed by Gabe Goldberg and Phil Smith? There was The VM/ESA Systems Handbook and The VM/ESA User's and Applications Handbook. I was thrilled to have been asked to contribute a chapter in one of them: CMS Application Performance. The experience was amazing. My first taste of writing was a humbling and rewarding experience. Who would have thought stringing a bunch of words together would be so difficult.

As I look back over the contributors, I see so many wonderful people. Those of you that have copies, dig them out. It's almost as much fun as pulling out one's high school yearbook. The Class of 1994 (Phil or Gabe will correct me if I have the year wrong). Oh, look, there's Mark Cathcart with his chapter: Wide-Open VM. While DCE and POSIX aren't z/VM bread and butter these days, Mark's words portray how much interoperability there has been with the VM products over the years, and how it continues to be important.

Like Mark's chapter, many others are out of date when it comes to the specific technology, but almost all retain elements of the core of z/VM. The keys to writing good server virtual machines remain true today. The importance of delineating accounting and security functions didn't disappear. And I dare say some of the collaboration software programmers of today would benefit from reading the chapter on Exploiting OffceVision/VM.

So hurry, go find your copy of the handbooks. Grab a fresh cup of coffee and enjoy.

I had to search on-line for the books as well. And yes, I clicked this: