When it comes to bringing IBM Z into the 21st century and making it more accessible to newcomers and making it easier to maintain there's basically two main schools of thought regarding what this process should be called.

There's the camp that calls improving and simplifying the IBM Z ecosystem "modernization". They believe this is a good term to describe the process of adopting new tools, making z/OS or other Z operating systems simpler to use, updating COBOL applications to use modern programming standards, and so on.

Then there's the camp that believes calling mainframe initiatives like the ones described above "modernization" is actually harmful to the perception of the ecosystem. Many companies that are in favor of killing mainframe hardware or even the applications that run on them use the term modernization as well and this is where some of the issues arises according to this camp. They believe that it plays into the idea that mainframes are antiquated and bad environments.

Some prefer terms like "declunkification" or "simplifcation" over "modernization", as they argue this doesn't play into negative stereotypes about the IBM Z ecosystem.

There's different ways to look at it and tackle the problems. I personally don't think there is a right answer for which term should be used, it's entirely subjective.

Personally I think there's value in mainframers taking charge of the term and getting ahead of those who want to kill the mainframe. Essentially claiming the term for ourselves.

It's also a fact that there's a large number of arguably outdated technologies floating around on the system that need to be brought up to a modern standard, personally that to me naturally makes the process of fixing this modernization.

At the end of the day this to me is all semantics however. What helps our system far more than discussing terms is actually improving it out in the real world.

There's a ton of shops that don't offer more user friendly editors like VS Code or a JetBrains IDE, don't have solid strategies for training and recruiting new people, don't have plans to adopt modern languages like Python or Golang, have old code that is poorly maintained and poorly documented, aren't experimenting with new technologies like Docker, don't have SSH enabled, and so on.

Adopting new technologies can potentially mean work being shifted over to the mainframe, new employees having an easier time becoming productive, non-mainframers having a better perception of the platform and much more.

If we work hard and do good work now, then it won't matter what we called this process during this era of the mainframe.