Between summer vacations and working on cool, new features, the IBM Z Open Editor team nearly missed a major milestone – over 150,000 installs! We’re excited so many people are embracing Z Open Editor’s modern experience for IBM z/OS application development.  

If you haven’t tried it yet, Z Open Editor is free and available as an individual extension or as part of an extension pack bundle with Z Open Debug, Zowe Explorer and IBM CICS for Zowe Explorer on the VS Code Marketplace and the IBM mainframe Downloads page.  

Z Open Editor brings the power of modern development to the mainframe. You can write and edit code in COBOL, PL/I, High-Level Assembler (HLASM), REXX and JCL -- all in VS Code, with the slick features today’s developers want including: 

Since its first release in September 2019, Z Open Editor has evolved rapidly. Now, Z Open Editor has a release about once a month so there’s always new things to try.   

We’re proud that 85% of users would recommend Z Open Editor to a colleague or business partner. Here's what some of them had to say: 

• “It's great to see the modern editor experience for COBOL programs”
• “Slick and fun! This tool makes development on z seamless and oh so COOL!”
• “Having the niceties of a modern editor (syntax highlighting, checking, code completion, etc) applied to mainframe oriented languages such as COBOL and PL/1 right inside VS Code is a huge value.”
• “Installed very quickly and worked great! I was able to quickly connect to a Github repository and see COBOL code in the editor.” 

If you’ve used Z Open Editor, we’d love to hear from you. Your input helps shape the future of Z Open Editor. 

Bonus for IBM Developer for z/OS Enterprise Edition (IDzEE) users-- you can unlock advanced capabilities in Z Open Editor via the official supported IBM Developer for z/OS on VS Code component, including: 

Z Open Editor isn’t just a powerful tool on its own – it's the foundation for other IBM products like watsonx Code Assistant for Z and Test Accelerator for Z, helping developers go from legacy to legendary. 

We’re hoping to reach 200,000 installs and beyond soon – helping even more developers modernize their mainframe application development workflow. Z Open Editor is here to make your coding experience smoother, faster, and more enjoyable.