If you are a Mainframe developer, you have probably spent a lot of time working with ISPF, TSO, datasets, JCL, and SDSF.

These tools are powerful and widely used in enterprise Mainframe environments. However, what if you could perform many of these activities directly from Visual Studio Code?

Imagine being able to:

• Browse Mainframe datasets from VS Code
• Open and edit dataset members
• Access the USS filesystem
• Write Python scripts directly inside USS
• Submit JCL without switching to another tool
• Check job status and view spool logs
• Work with Mainframe files using a modern editor

Sounds interesting, right?

In this article, we will learn how to set up Visual Studio Code (VS Code) with the Zowe Explorer extension and use it to interact with an IBM Mainframe running z/OS.