I’ve had a chance to visit customers literally around the
world and they all similarly ask the same question as to how to get more people
aware of the solutions available on IBM i.
In a phrase, educating the great unwashed. Yes, the IBM i is a special animal in the
world of computing. High uptime,
resilient object and file systems, integrated database and incredible native
language for business in RPG is just the beginning of a radically different OS
than Linux or Windows. There is a lot to
misunderstand about this platform and therefore education is essential. One
customer who had been on the platform for over 20 years actually did not know
what COMMON was! Ouch!!! By the way, we’ll be at the Annual Conference and Expo at the beginning
of April with a booth and sessions and more!
Education of the team is the manager’s responsibility. Another customer asked me about the kids
today learning RPG and why there aren’t that many. I mentioned Jim Buck’s program at Gateway and
also we kicked around a number of anecdotal concepts. So when we settled in to discuss what
projects they were using for PHP they pointed to a very young member of the
team who was primarily responsible for the PHP development. He is a great guy with a good head on his
shoulders for business, more on that in a minute. But what struck me was that they were
investing in his education of PHP and this makes perfect sense until I asked
the question: “When do you start training him on RPG?” You see, I thought after the previous
discussion about bringing younger folks into the fold of RPG that this customer
would have discovered this opportunity themselves. They were a little shocked when I mentioned
that having a younger person learn RPG until I reminded them of the previous
discussion. Once they considered what I
had to say they acknowledged that it would make sense to help this young man
learn RPG and that it could even make him more valuable as a resource in today’s
economy.
This brings up the primary position of my blog for the
month. What have you done to mentor
someone today? I remember when I was a
budding RPG developer and I had two mentors who were essential in my success as
an RPG programmer. Sure I might have
learned the same things over time, but not nearly as quickly or
effectively. In this day of “instant
gratification” everyone is too busy to stop and help someone along the way like
we used to in the 80’s and 90’s. And
certainly the Internet has come along way to make information much more available
and easier to absorb. But to hold
someone by the hand and explain exactly why *INZSR is a useful subroutine or
the different between packed decimal and an integer data type can effect
storage is something I simply do not see that much of these days. I challenge everyone out there who is
responsible for the development team, in any role. Go find an intern and teach them RPG.
OK, so it will take time for them to learn RPG. They may not like RPG once they’ve learned it
(silly thought). It’s not sexy like .Net
or Java (so what!). Then fuel the
discussion with some other points like CASH, MOOLAH, DeNiro, COIN, Money,
Geidis, scratch, and a myriad of other terms.
Folks, with nearly 8% unemployment (and higher when you consider those
who quit looking) I gotta believe there is someone out there who is wiling to
learn RPG in today’s shops. But just as
important, they must appreciate business.
Interns at local community colleges can come along with referrals from
their college advisers. Get in touch
with the local college adviser and look for an intern who appreciates BUSINESS! I have, somewhat provocatively, stated at
several presentations that RPG programmers are not programmers at all. They are business analysts who code RPG. Therefore, it is essential that anyone you
interview for a position to learn or work on IBM i that they understand and
appreciate business. That is not to say
young developers who want to do cool, sexy things cannot help an IBM i
shop. But they will tend to get
frustrated when you ask them the difference between a PO, a payable and a
payment! We are a VERY special breed as
RPG developers because of the business influence and therefore we should be
looking at this for future IBM i developers.
One of the anticipated questions I run into is “well why
would a younger person be interested in learning RPG?” The obvious answer is they want a JOB!!! But do
you want to throw them into the deep end of RPG with no hope of leveraging any
other technologies? I think the reality
is to get someone on deck who is will to learn RPG, but also leverage what they’ve
learned in the college setting like HTML, JavaScript, Ajax, PHP, etc. Modernize your applications and leverage the
more modern tools available in IBM i at the same time!
See you soon!
