IBM System i

RPG and 5250 screens are like music CDs?

The iDevelop blog has a recent post comparing the music industry to the IBM System i. In particular, it looks at how the reluctance of the music industry to embrace digital music — instead continuing to push CDs — is similar to System i end users’ reluctance to embrace PHP and other newer System i technologies, instead continuing to embrace green screens and RPG.

What do you think?

The System i community’s addiction to bad news

Jon Paris writes that despite some good news coming out of the System i platform in recent weeks — announcement of new customers, the forming of iManifest — a negative attitude persists among many in the System i community. It is an attitude that the platform is on its way out, and all but dead. He writes:

In the U.S. there are also many signs of recovery. The most obvious one to us being that we are starting to see more interest in our services. Even more dramatic is that enrollments in our RPG and DB2 Summit conference in Minneapolis in October already substantially exceed the number who attended in Orlando in the spring.

But all of this sounds horribly like good news–and that’s not too popular right now so we’d better stop before we depress too many people.

That last paragraph obviously has a twinge of sarcasm included. My take: There often seems to be voices on each end, but none in the middle. There are those saying System i will be dead soon, and those who are simply cheerleading the platform. I think both sides empathize with the other but often won’t admit it because it might weaken their own stance.

RPG decidedly not dead, say Search400.com readers

On June 29, 2009, many Search400.com readers received an email that got them a little stirred up. I sent out our newsletter and presented an article on EGL and a blog on RPGAAS. This is what I wrote:

So is EGL the new high-definition, flat-screen replacement to that old vacuum-tube television? Is RPG really that outdated? Is there a dearth of RPG programmers available, requiring shops to consider the RPGAAS offering? I ask for reader input partly out of sheer curiosity but also out of a desire to serve the informational and educational interests of readers. If RPG is outdated, what do you need to know about instead? Send me your feedback.

Eleven readers were compelled to write back, and not too surprisingly, none of them sung the praises of the fall of RPG. Instead, most made ardent defenses of RPG as a useful and necessary programming language.

Marc Hall wrote:

I don’t believe RPG is outdated. It has become much more like a scientific language since the introduction of procedures, local variables, and pointers. ILE makes reusability easy, with modules and service programs. RPG seems like a very relevant language and I enjoy it. If there are people suggesting that RPG is outdated, why do they say so?

Bob Mizner wrote:

First, let me say that I reject the argument that there is a dearth of RPG programming talent available. This argument fails to understand the dynamics of supply and demand market forces. There is a dearth of RPG positions available to skilled RPG programmers. Don’t believe it? Post a job opening for an RPG programmer offering a competitive salary with benefits; I promise you, within hours you will have a pile of resumes to choose from. I personally know of several traditional RPG programmers who are currently either looking, or have “settled” for other work.

AS/400 shops stopped hiring after Y2K for a number of reasons, but a scarcity of programming talent was not one of them. Younger people who were educated in the 80’s and 90’s on Wintel platforms – and, in some cases, on Unix and Linux, because, after all, that’s what they learned on in college – moved into decision making positions, and lacked a fundamental understanding of what the IBM midrange platform was doing for the organization. [They] made strategic decisions to move off the platform onto newer, sexier platforms that were graphic and Web-enabled, and which made them feel more comfortable. They walked through the organization and saw all these green text-based screens, and wondered why their internal platform wasn’t capable of colorful graphics and Web-based applications that communicated to their customers and supply chain? And when they questioned their staff as to why those kinds of apps were not available, they got answers ranging from “IBM doesn’t support that” or “it’s expensive and difficult to do” on an AS/400-based server. Which is far from the truth …

I personally know of an AS/400 shop who has Web-enabled all of their internal, home-grown applications. Remote locations were able to ditch expensive frame-relay communication networks in favor of DSL lines into each of their 50+ remote locations, domestic and international. Was it expensive? It was, in fact, a fraction of the cost of moving off the AS/400 platform onto something Windows-based, rewriting legacy apps, and installing and maintaining all new Windows-based hardware and networks.

If there is a dearth of anything, it is in ISV’s offering native ERP solutions to businesses. There are a dwindling number of solutions providers who have stayed with the platform; most have developed comparable, competing apps using .Net or other development tools. RPG programmers have had to learn Java, .Net, or now PHP in order to remain employed. Rational tools? EGL? It’s all just additional buzzwords to facilitate IBM’s move away from RPG. IBM sees the writing on the wall, all these young decision-makers wanting graphic and Web-enabled interfaces. So instead of placing development emphasis on making RPG-based apps more modern – perhaps by offering a native CGI for RPG – IBM moves businesses away from the platform, away from the strength of all those legacy apps written in RPG that drive business logic, to newer platforms, newer tools, newer apps written in languages that didn’t exist a decade ago. And probably won’t exist a decade from now. Which means, for businesses who invest in them by developing business logic apps, another conversion, another migration, a decade or so down the line …

Furthermore… vLegaci’s … “RPG as a Service” is nothing more than out-sourced contract development with a new name. A pig is still a pig, and calling it something different don’t make it so. I don’t buy into it as even remotely related to “cloud computing” a.k.a. capacity on demand.

Continued »

System i guy looking to shave hair for charity

This might be a bit offtopic, but it’s for a good cause. Aaron Bartell, a System i consultant and big proponent of RPG on the platform, is running a marathon in Chicago on Aug. 7. His goal is to raise $10,000 for World Vision, a Christian humanitarian organization that is tackling worldwide child poverty and hunger.

But Bartell is throwing in a twist. For certain landmarks, Bartell has agreed to remove hair from certain parts of his body. At the $1,000 mark, he’ll shave his head. For $2,000, the armpits. And so on, until at the $10,000 mark, Bartell will hand over a hand buzzer to his 4-year-old son and let him get artistic on his head.

Check it out, and if you can, donate.

Train your RPG employees and pay them well

It turns out that the secret to retaining good RPG programmers is simple: pay them above average, and train them well.

Is this different from any other profession? Probably not, but in the System i world, holding onto good RPG talent and keeping them happy is not an easy task. During a surprise birthday bash in California, the folks at iDevelop chatted it up with another attendee who manages a team of RPG developers. Here’s their story:

It seems that she must be doing something very right because her team returned a 96+ percent job-satisfaction rating on a recent company-wide survey. The goal the company had set was less than 75 percent so the high rating among the developers was evidence of the great job the management team was doing to keep them happy and productive.

What’s her secret? She attributes it to two major factors. First, they pay attention to salary levels in the industry and make sure they are paying a bit above the average. Secondly, and we personally believe at least as importantly, they make sure all their developers are consistently and regularly trained in the latest features and technologies related to their RPG development. She feels this investment in training not only has the obvious positive benefit of making their applications as good as they can be and the developers as productive as they can be, but it also helps tremendously in staff retention.

Sometimes doing one of the most difficult things — like getting and retaining good RPG developers — takes simple solutions.

The return of Frank Soltis

Frank Soltis, considered the grandfather of the AS/400 and all its various prequels and sequels, is back in the IBM System i scene. Soltis has been involved with the platform since it got its start 40 years ago with the System/38 and System/36, working as an engineer at IBM.

Late last year, Soltis retired from IBM as a chief scientist, mainly because the merger of the System i and System p platforms didn’t leave any room for someone to focus solely on the IBM i. Now he’s back, though, in an advisory role with Vision Solutions.

Soltis has joined the technical advisory board of Vision Solutions, which is one of the biggest software vendors on the IBM System i. He’ll be using his experience to help guide the company’s product strategies, and heading out on a three-date European tour talking about the future of the platform, and specifically, to talk about high availability on the System i, which is what Vision Solutions sells.

He’ll be in Milan on Feb. 24, then in Rome on Feb. 26 and Paris on Feb. 27. More information at the Vision Solutions site.

What are the best new technologies in 2009 for IBM System i?

Jim Mason has outlined his best bets for the AS/400 programmers in 2009, in his recent tip on Search400.com. Briefly, Mason’s list includes Rational Developer for i, Eclipse Web tools, Enterprise open source architecture, Qwiki Web work spaces for project management, Web reporting, Web databases, virtualization, and WebSphere Community Edition.

Some of these didn’t surprise me — we have discussed the opportunities that open source can provide System i shops a few times in the past year. We’re also expecting an uptick in use and development around PHP on IBM i soon. And despite some recently reported problems with Rational Developer for i, it’s being used, and the more people using it, the more bugs will be discovered and fixed. We also recently shared how you can use virtualization for backups, and we’re interested in hearing how else virtualization is being applied in AS/400 shops.

What tools are you using that aren’t listed? Do you have any quibbles with Jim’s list? Or do you echo your support for his selections? Share your thoughts!

Welcome the new iSeries blog location on IT Knowledge Exchange

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