I used to teach ILE RPG part time at a local community college. My last gig was 4 years ago. Why? IBM says there's a big demand from for trained System i people from businesses. <p>The bottom line is that there needs to be a big demand from students. If no one is signing up for these courses, these classes won't go. It's going to have to take awareness of the System i. I hope IBM doesn't change the name again. How about some ads on MTV or product placement in more youth orientated show? <p>I'm tired of working with a bunch of old dinosaurs. The System i has so much to offer. It's a shame that it's still IBM's best kept secret.

<i>I'm tired of working with a bunch of old dinosaurs.</i> <p> With the years it took to get the experience to teach "ILE" RPG, plus the length of your teaching, plus four years, what does that make you, a spring chicken? <p> Where are these old dinosaurs that you are tired ot working with? One guy somewhere that's tired of you? I haven't seen them to this day. All I see is the occasional poster complaining about it without any corroborating information. I haven't seen any of that either. <p> rd

John, thanks for the article. Just have time for a brief reply to a complex issue. <p> Supply and demand. <p> Websphere. <p> Those are the short answers. <p> I'll add more tonight. <p> rd

This is a discussion about <B>The System i Academic Initiative</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 @.6b3ce21d>Click here for the article</a>.</p>

<i>Supply and demand.</i> <p> From what I have seen, there have been enough experienced RPG programmers available that companies have been able to specify not only years of experience, but experience specific to the software package they run. And get what they want. <p> So of course experienced programmers have to move on, and entry level choose technologies with jobs, C++, Java, and .NET Visual Basic, while the remainder of RPG programmers play musical chairs. At least as long as there's still a chair when the music stops. <p> Could things change and people be hired out of school for RPG programming like we used to in the 80's and 90's? If RPG ERP's start selling like they used to in the 80's and 90's. There are many good ones, and companies may be starting to see why AS/400 ERP's and RPG programmers were so successful and cost effective. <p> But hiring new grads would lag behind a big uptick in iseries and ERP sales, and after everyone being forced to choose something with a career, we'll be told how there are no Americans trained for these jobs and they have no choice but to send all the work overseas. <p> Which I will still call bs. Consulting companies used to cross train RPG programmers like me from other languages and operations in a couple of months. And then send us out to be billable. And we produced. <p> So of course no one is going to train or be trained in something that has no jobs lined up for it. But if the RPG jobs come later, programmers can cross train in a couple of months to fill them. There's no chicken or egg question here. <p><p><i>Websphere.</i> <p> Anything IBM does has to be understood to be a thinly veiled attempt to sell Websphere, their IBM web server software. Any relevance to RPG, or even i5/OS (nee OS/400), is totally coincidental. <p> rd