Programming Highs and Tire Lows

Last week we experienced an interesting mix of high and low points.

The big high for us was teaching a class of Java programmers about the joys of RPG. We also spent a little time on RDi, but since they already used Rational Application Developer for their Java work that was mostly just to introduce them to the IBM i specific features.

Three things helped make this an enjoyable class to teach:

1. The students were all young--and we don't mean young in our terms (i.e., anyone less than 50) we mean young young.
2. They were all enthusiastic and asked the right questions, which clearly showed that they were not only understanding the language but also getting a feel for its power and simplicity. We'll be going back to complete their training later this year once the students have had a chance to absorb the initial lessons and we're looking forward to it.
3. This was our first opportunity to teach the new all-free-form RPG flavor of the language. While it was a lot more work to retrofit our teaching materials than we had anticipated (never thought about how many of the examples have F, D and P specs in them!), what a difference it makes when teaching RPG to Java (or C/C++/C# or PHP, etc) developers. Those pesky columns--even when just for data declarations--always caused so much consternation in past classes. This time, the only hitch was the occasional need to remind them that the code must start on or after column 8 and end at column 80.

This class has reaffirmed our belief that all too often, trying to replace your retiring RPG programmers with experienced RPGers is a waste of time. Not that there aren't good RPGers out there looking for work, but most are too expensive for companies are looking for junior to intermediate level staff. Either that or their "30 years of experience" is actually three years repeated 10 times over because they are so reluctant to learn new skills. Case in point--and one of the lows of the week--we had an email concerning a shop where the staff (we won't dignify them by using the terms "programmers", "developers" or "RPGers") are busily stripping out things like embedded SQL and prototyped program calls whenever they have to maintain a modern program because they can't be bothered to learn this "new-fangled stuff." They probably rue the passing of the tabulator and the punched card too. Sad, so sad. No wonder the shop is moving away from the IBM i.

The other high/low mixture of the week concerned our rental car. Very soon after we set off from the airport a low tire pressure warning appeared. We checked but the tire appeared to be fine. Given that rental car companies often do a lousy job of what would be the PDI (pre-delivery inspection) at your local car dealer we have encountered such false warnings many times before. We kept checking but despite the warning light the tire appeared fine. Until it wasn't. Suddenly it lost pressure so we took it to the local tire store to see if they could fix it. Nope. It had a side wall leak, which couldn't be plugged. No problem, they inflated the tire again and we called the rental car company. "Yes sir - we will happily exchange your car. Just drive to your nearest location and they will help you." Fine except only corporate locations would do and the nearest was a 90+ minute round trip away and it was already getting late in the day. It was a slow leak so hopefully it would last until the next evening when we could drive down and swap the car.

The next morning arrived sunny, hot and humid with the tire completely flat. Changing a tire while in work clothes and 95 degree weather had not been high on Jon's wish list for the day but. ...

Luckily that was the end of the lows. We drove the car back to the rental company and, to cut a long story short, the only replacement vehicle they had available was a Mercedes 350. Not a bad swap for a Chevy Impala! Only problem is that Jon is enjoying driving it so much that he wants to keep it. Sadly that is not on the cards but at least we get to use it for a few more days.

  

Eating the Elephant

 

At conferences, during classes and often in our email there's one statement/question that we get asked over and over: "I know I've let my skills get rusty, I know there's a huge list of things I should learn, but where do I start? It is all so overwhelming."

It is a good question, but the answer is really quite simple. When faced with the task of eating an elephant there is only one way to deal with it--one bite at a time.

But there's a problem with that basic premise. With an elephant, of course, there are at least some obvious potential starting points. Nibble your way up from the tail, or gnaw your way from the tip of the trunk, just for starters. With the type of list most of the questioners are faced with, however, the choices are not quite so obvious. SQL, XML, Web services, mobile apps, HTML, CSS, Javascript, Ruby, etc. Where to start?

To an extent it depends on where you are right now, and whether your current job is steering you in a specific direction. Of course if the latter is the case, the answer is probably a lot more obvious. By "where you are right now" we are talking specifically talking about your RPG skills. For example, if you have yet to embrace the use of subprocedures as a way of life-- not just for reusable components but as a vehicle for structuring your programs--then that is clearly an area that you need to address.

But perhaps the choice is actually easier than that? We think we could make an argument that your first step should be to learn a new language. After all, if you haven't got your head around subprocedures yet then perhaps it is because, like many others, you simply can't see the point. You've managed with subroutines and dynamically called programs for years - why bother to change? Our good friend George Farr often recounts that when people tell him how much they enjoyed his "Java for RPG Programmers" book, he frequently asks if they are doing much Java programming. The answer is invariably the same "No, but it made a huge difference to the way I code RPG!"

Java is, of course, a perfectly valid language to learn, as indeed are Ruby (now available for IBM i) and Python among others. But as we've stated many times, we still feel that PHP is the best choice for most RPG programmers. Why? Because you can use it as a procedural language and gently ease your way into object-oriented (OO) programming without have to totally rewire your brain. We know that many reading this will say that learning to program in OO is easy; why the big deal? We're happy for you. We really are. But personally we have not found that to be the case. As Jon has often publicly stated, "I consider myself to be a failed Java programmer." He learned the syntax and can write and read Java code but doesn't _think_ in OO terms. Slowly but surely PHP is helping to remedy that situation. It also also improved his RPG!

Regardless of your choice of language, we want to make one clear cut recommendation. Sign up with Learnable. It is our go-to resource for all new technologies. Learnable offer books and online classes in everything from PHP to Ruby and HTML to Javascript and mobile app development. At $29 a month (or $15 a month if you sign up for a year), it is a bargain basement way to jump start your new skills. That membership gives you access to their entire library plus the ability to download two books a month. Considering most technical books are $40 and up that is worth the price alone. As a minimum sign up for the mailing list where an introductory price of $99 per year is offered from time to time.

So, don't delay: take your first bite!

P.S., while researching the origin of the elephant idea we came upon Mikki's blog and her post on this topic. It has nothing to do with computers, but those of you who feel overwhelmed in your personal lives and professional lives may find it an interesting read.

What We Are Thankful For

We live in Canada and consequently our Thanksgiving was in a few weeks ago. However, as in most years, we were working in the U.S. that day, so we tend to celebrate in November. So as we near the Thanksgiving celebration, our thoughts turn to things we are particularly thankful for.

We have many personal things we are thankful for. These include our health (including our wonderful Canadian healthcare system), our families (including four exceptional grandchildren), our home (which we sometimes wish we could spend more time in than we do), and many more things that we could go on for hours listing. We are truly blessed.

But in this post, we thought we'd concentrate on those things related to our work with IBM i that we're particularly thankful for.

First of all, we're grateful to still have work and a good income, despite the state of the economy. We know many who are not so fortunate. Many IBM i shops seem to have decided that an uncertain economy is a good time to exploit their investment in existing applications by moving them forward, enhancing their applications' value and the developers' productivity. That just happens to be our specialty, so it has worked out well for us.

We're grateful that the developers of our favorite programming language--RPG--have never even considered resting on their laurels. They could have simply cashed in on the maintenance revenue stream for applications running the businesses of thousands of companies worldwide. Instead, they have continually made the language more modern (/Free, data structure enhancements), more powerful (native XML processing, enhanced file handling), and especially recently, more easily expandable (via RPG Open Access or OA--more on OA in a moment)

We thank our lucky stars every day for RSE (the toolset currently packaged in RDP, earlier in RDi and WDSC). It's almost painful to recall our days of SEU development, with DSPFFD to get externally described field names and spooled compiler listings to find compile errors (shudder!).

And we're delighted that Rochester has given us a new friend to play with by embracing PHP on our favorite platform. If nothing else, PHP allows us to breathe a sigh of relief that we don't have to keep beating our heads against the Java brick wall. PHP gives us another option for a modern, browser-oriented language environment that lets us use OO to the extent we choose and offers an amazing wealth of open-source tools and applications. All with relatively simple integration to RPG applications and IBM i function. And best of all, it makes sense to those of us with RPG brains.

We said we'd come back to RPG OA. That's simply so that we can remind you that it was about a year ago that we made a plea for rational thought (pun intended) to prevail related to the Ts and Cs for OA. We have seen some progress. A trial version is available, at last. But we're still waiting for the true solution that we still hope will come--OA support to be included free-of-charge with either the OS or the RPG compiler. We have read rumors to the effect that we may not have much longer to wait for this. It would make a really nice present to find wrapped up under our Christmas tree!

Most of all, we're simply thankful to have had the opportunity to make a career working on the best platform on the planet for business applications.

Last, but by no means least, we're very thankful to all the readers of this blog. When the IBM Systems Magazine folks asked us to begin writing this some years ago, our first reaction was "but who would want to read what we have to say every week?"  Well, apparently, quite a few of you would. We're gratified and humbled at the number of you reading our weekly posts. Thank you all.

And a very happy Thanksgiving to all--whether in the USA or elsewhere--we all have a lot to be thankful for.

OA and PHP News

We were both delighted and saddened to see Profound Logic announced at COMMON that they will be reselling IBM Rational's Open Access: RPG Edition (OA) along with their own Profound UI tooling. Delighted because it will make it easier for the folks buying Profound UI to get their hands on the OA product. Saddened, though, by realizing this means it's apparently easier for an ISV to go through the process of signing up to be a reseller (no easy task) than it was for them to try to explain to their perspective customers how to buy it!

You could sense Profound CEO Alex Roytman's frustration in the announcement. For sure he's not doing it for the money, how much can you make on a product that typically sells for less than $2,000. This notion was cemented in our minds by his comment that he still believes the product should simply be delivered free as part of the OS.

We had really hoped by now IBM would have relented and abandoned this pricing silliness, or at least come up with a free trial version, or failing that at least made it simpler to order ... but no. Here we are more than a year after OA's introduction and apparently nothing has changed. Our friend Aaron Bartell can bear witness to that having recently risked his sanity and once again braved the waters in an attempt to order it.

Dear IBM: We love you dearly, but do you have to make it this hard?

On an altogether happier note ...

We appear to be approaching the formal launch of the new IBM i toolkit. By all accounts it will not only improve the capabilities and performance of our PHP applications, but will also herald a revolutionary departure from the IBM norm in two other ways. First, the new toolkit is open source, and second it is RPG-based. Seriously ... for real! The toolkit is being jointly developed by IBM, Zend, and members of the RPG community. Like the EasyCom toolkit that Zend currently delivers, and which it will ultimately replace, this new offering allows for program and procedure calls, access to system resources such as spool files, data queues, etc.

As if the news that the new tools would be coded in RPG wasn't enough, we also understand the performance is significantly improved (it certainly appeared so in the short test drive we had) and the subprocedure call mechanism now allows for return values--real ones--not just the four byte integers currently supported. No longer will you need to rewrite or wrapper subprocedures for reuse on the Web. That's certainly good news as it's been a source of frustration for us and many others who used the PHP or Java toolkits.

Since the community will be able to contribute to this new offering, it will be interesting to see how it evolves. Another point we should note is that it isn't just intended for use by PHP. The underlying mechanisms will be usable from any platform, or indeed between IBM i systems. We're really looking forward to having a chance to play with this new toy and will report back on our findings.