Joel, (and no, I wont call you Joe no more) <p>I explored a program by Mohawk College, Hamilton once and was greatly disappointed. They were teaching legacy stuff there. I asked them, if these kids are to learn legacy stuff, how are they going to compete in this shrinking market with us old coots who are there are for decades? They need to learn Websphere and other visual stuff and create their own market which is still open. <p>I hope if the iSeries education is not about leading edge, it is atleast not legacy stuff.

I'd add that there are a bunch of other alternatives out there to WebSphere for a better interface, even "based on" the i5. <p>I taught AS/400 programming when it was new. The RPG cycle wasn't necessary anymore even then, but I taught the RPG cycle full up because almost any shop those guys went to were going to see lots of programs built on it, and new people often get maintenance coding before getting into much new coding. <p>Today I might lean away from teaching the cycle, though, because there's "too many" other things going on in RPG that HAVE to be taught, and this time it's because it's NOT out there in maintenance code. Meaning, we have to infuse existing i-shops with the skills to adapt new techniques. <p>And I regard adapting to GUI's as nearly an emergency for us. I recommend Brian Kelly's "venting rant" on the subject. I too was fooled by the rumors of upcoming IBM-supplied native RPG GUI-handling, but agree that there is no more waiting for the elephant to dance on this tune. Maybe it figures it doesn't want to hurt WebSphere, but we need to make that irrelevant. <p>There are tools in the market for doing this. IMO something will standardize eventually, but we need to go at it... <p>--Alan

I have to disagree about not seeing code using the cycle. I still see a significant number of programs based on the RPG Cycle. I work as a full time System i professional and teach courses (including RPG) at the a local community college. At one time the college had in the curriculum 3 semesters of RPG (although I never saw the 3rd semester course offered). We now only have 1 semester of RPG, and because of small enrollment, the class is often cancelled 2 out 3 times it is offered. (A lot of students are disappointed to find out that its is not programing Role Playing Games-they all want to be game programmers, not business programmers. The number that have never heard of AS/400, iSeries, System i.... before enrolling in courses is in itself astonishing. Many enroll with the belief that there are two types of systems Apple and intel based/compatible. Huge learning curve here.) <BR>
One of the things as an instructor I struggle with is what to teach and what to leave out. <BR>
I try to give some exposure to the cycle (otherwise why are you turning on *inLR?) <BR>
We deal primarily with ILE, but I know that if these students are going to get jobs in our area they are going to see a fair amount of II and III. <BR>
Is subfile programming important? <BR>
Procedure calls? <BR>
How much RPG II and III should we include? <p>I would like to use WSDS instead of/in addition to the green screen, but that means that all the PC's in the lab and classrooms need to be upgraded to accommodate the HW requirements, not going to happen on the tight budgets our schools are on. Also, how do we give access to the tools when they work on projects from home? <p>What we want to do, and what we can do because of restrictions of resources (time, $, equipment) are often at odds. Finding a realistic balance that benefits the next generation of programmers is where it's at.

What I am questioning is the teaching of legacy in schools. It is true that there is legacy code out there, and therefore legacy shops and jobs but the question is, "How many entry level jobs are there for legacy and how long will they last?". It is a fast shrinking cut throat market already. Guys like me are working on replacing exisiting legacy and guys like you are creating more legacy graduates. With this double whammy there would be no legacy jobs left in a matter of time. Yes there are legacy managers here are there sticking to legacy code and insisting on writing legacy code but every now and then they get booted out and with them the shop is also shut down ... replaced with SAP or Oracle or .NET <p>Compared to that there are still some opportunities left in Websphere. There they can survive against old coots like us and maybe save not only their future but also that of AS/400.

You have to see it from the edu side...How much, in nexp(weeks), can you get crammed into the students (future green-bean) grey-matter...??? Like a boyscout, they have to be prepared to see anything, use any IDE, any host-editor, proprietary tools, popular 3rd part junk, etc. <p> Teaching is at the level where the budget $ will take it. It's difficult to teach "over" the capabilities of the typical community college installations. I can appreciate the push to get closer to the edge...But in my opinion, most proprietary development utilities, tools, and (pseudo-almost-there gimmee's like Query-Mgr) was back around V3R? B.C...Take a long-long time to be "common" to most shops. <p>They (students) need to know there are old methods, new methods, and they inevitably co-exist as legacy-olithic OPM cycle-programs like the O/E applications almost everywhere and some newer module/procedural stuff done by "ghoster's" who did it, didn't document jack, and left some time ago...They must rely on their ability to locate information and "READ"...Read, read,read,...

<i>"You have to see it from the edu side"</i> <p>Well I would prefer seeing it from a job market point of view because the expectation of the student is to find a job after spending all his (or his parent's, or the tax payer's) hard earned money and his months of efforts. This is professional training, not traditional education. <p>Almost a decade ago, I spend a lot of my hard earned money and invested almost a year in doing a diploma for web development. By the time I graduated with honors and as the top student, I found out that all that was in vain. The job market was over flooded with guys who were younger and had more experience. The only opportunities were in .NET and the school had decided to teach me the older technology because the teacher (who lacked .NET) convinced them this way. <p>I fail to see the point of teaching something that would not get the student a job. It is a total waste of time and money. I see why not enough students sign up. This sometimes work for traditional eduction but not for professional training. It is because corporations give entry level jobs to MBAs who have not run a real life business but wont give a job to an SAP graduate who had not done hands on work.

Hassan, <p><i>Almost a decade ago, I spend a lot of my hard earned money and invested almost a year in doing a diploma for web development. By the time I graduated with honors and as the top student, I found out that all that was in vain. The job market was over flooded with guys who were younger and had more experience.</i> <p>So, about 1997? The internet was only about 2 years old, for the masses. WWW explosive growth didn't hit until 1996. So, these other guys didn't have much experience after all. Javascript was only 2 years old, so dynamic HTML didn't exist yet. So, I don't understand why these other guys were considered "experienced". <p>Chris

Right? I hope. I can't disagree with your point. I sit on my wallet too. It's all about having enough arrows in your quiver. And...every individual is responsible for gaining employable skill-sets for the continuation of their careers. <p> Like you probably, it was all out of pocket $ for me and frankly, some of the "crap" I paid for didn't teach me jack, or I was already beyond the knowledge and scope of the instruction. Don't take the hiring of younger talent that doesn't have any hair growing out of their ears yet too personal, or over-the-hill. They hire them sometimes because the hiring manager will accept "still wet" skill sets and that usually comes with away-way lower ding to his/her budget-based bonus incentives...<wink-wink> <p>But still...The student still isn't going to get the job over the candidate that can answer this question during the "tech" interview: <p>What is a "look-ahead" field used for? And what RPGII specification identifies it's use in the source code...??? (An actual question I encountered years after the last S36 "Model D" sank in Pearl Harbor.)

This is a discussion about <B>Taking the Initiative on Education</b>.<p align='center'><a href=http://www.mcpressonline.com/mc? This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it @.6b50a598>Click here for the article</a>.</p>

I meant to just exaggerate when I said "almost" a decade. I guess I ended up over-exaggeration. It was just six years ago ... post 9/11 frenzy. I wanted to do websphere and found the only websphere education came from a bunch of between-the-job indians who taught it as they learned it onl fly. So it was no-thanks for me. I decided to jump on a reputable school for diploma in Web devlopment and ended up spending all my saving to find out that even passing with honors and being the top student would not let me get a job because it should have been .NET