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Is it just me?

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  • Is it just me?

    I've seen it before. Windows IT project managers carving out fiefdoms for their servers. At most they will take an FTP from iseries~AS/400, but that's only until they can get rid of it. I wouldn't trust that you are being told the truth about responses from IBM, unless you are the primary intermediary with IBM and handle the payment of their bills. rd

  • #2
    Is it just me?

    What I meant from response from IBM is at the tech support level. In the last 6 or 7 problems we have had with V5R4 the first question has been ,"What PTF Level are you at" even when we had just applied PTF's the previous afternoon we were always out of date. V5R4 was released too soon or did not have the proper beta testing it should have. We deal with a BP for our hardware purchases so in that respect we don't deal with IBM directly. I will agree with the feifdom statement, but IBM has to take responsibility there also. Ask 90% of the programmers being hired today what RPG is and I will bet a year's salary the majority will say Role Playing Games or some PC terminology. Ask them what an AS400 is and they will look at you like you have just said q[iuwenkvsd. We had a consulting group come in to evaluate IT and propose a direction. They interviewed everyone in the department and when it was our turn they knew absolutely nothing about IBM (other than they sold to Linova) and figured they weren't in the computer business any more. Our argument for the AS400, iSeries, i5 has always been "no operating system or hardware problems". We can't say that any more because of the myriad of problems we have had with V5R4. It is legacy, there are no programmers under 40 years old that know RPG and it isn't taught in school. Our VP tasked us to find a GUI front end when we found one we liked he said it would be better if we looked into a .NET interface. We found that and the statement was then made, "no matter what you do to dress it up it is still an AS400". Legacy means old , old means useless. I would feel better if there were some youngsters coming up that we could mentor and then have them surpass us. The problem is that I don't speak the same language as the youngsters. I would imagine that, unless something drastic happens, that IBM will really start hurting within the next 5 years and will eventually become a footnote in IT history.

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    • #3
      Is it just me?

      It is legacy, there are no programmers under 40 years old that know RPG and it isn't taught in school. Your perception is colored by your perception, Bill. You don't have any new programmers there coming on the AS/400, but then you have an IT management that are not /400 people and want to move everything to their technology, in your case Windows. Been there, seen it. It will happen, and those tasks they gave you were just hurdles they hoped you couldn't jump. They were never going to consider anything but Windows. "It's still an AS/400" was the bottom line all along. They are a little bit more honest than some of the other political hack jobs I've seen though. There are plenty of younger than 40 RPG programmers where there are jobs. However, the commonly repeated wisdom that CIO's and business executives buy systems that 20 somethings admire, or that 20 somethings will be making the buying decisions in 20 years as if that makes any difference now, is maybe the dumbest IT thing I've ever heard repeated, and it's repeated all the time. If there were any truth or logic to it, and there isn't, business would run on Windows or Linux. That's all young programmers have a chance to know, and all they would care about anyway. Businesses actually buy systems to run their business. And when's the last time you ever saw a CIO care what the youngsters thought? They do exactly what you are describing at your company. They do a political hack job until they put in what *they* want, not what new hires play with at home. Granted, Windows programmers will hire on at Windows companies, Linux likewise, but most business transactions run on large systems not found in a den. rd

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      • #4
        Is it just me?

        "Ask 90% of the programmers being hired today what RPG is and I will bet a year's salary the majority will say Role Playing Games or some PC terminology." Yeah, but that was true back to the 80's, Bill. When I started programming, the languages were assembly language, C and Pascal. Two of those are gone, and C is no longer the primary language it once was. SQL was a mainframe thing, Java wasn't even Oak yet, and colleges taught FORTRAN and COBOL. The only people who cared about RPG were people who programmed IBM midrange computers, and the only people who cared about IBM midrange computers were people who cared about rock-solid hardware and software. Today, much of the IT decision making has been pushed onto people who don't know anything about IT, and that's a sad statement about the entire industry. If any other department were run by people with no experience, you'd call the company crazy. But IT isn't seen as critical, even though if IT departments were to present the simple business case of "how much would it cost you to do this WITHOUT computers," the explicit worth of IT would be staggering. IT is seen as a cost center, probably because we lost most of our credibility during the contractor locust-swarming of the 90s culminating in the Great Y2K Scam. But to say that the iSeries is defunct because the new generation doesn't know about it is a little off the tack. The iSeries is losing ground because nobody of OUR generation has the inner fortitude to stand up to the bean counters and tell them what the reality of the situation is. And so we reap what we sow. Don't blame IBM, the problem is typically a lot closer to home. Joe

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        • #5
          Is it just me?

          "Ask 90% of the programmers being hired today what RPG is and I will bet a year's salary the majority will say Role Playing Games or some PC terminology." way back in '83, when i got on the s/34, i was to be delivering reports, while i waited for JPL or NASA to call me and let me put my engineering degree to work. as time moved on, i was asked if i could program. i had used fortran, basic and cobol in school, with the army. was asked if i knew anything about rpg. "quite a bit," i replied, or something similar. and i went into my description of how the Rocket Propelled Grenade, model i/ii/iii/iv worked, how it was sighted in, and how the grenade was propelled. my boss just looked at me with the "deer in the headlights" look, on his face. i caught on that he was not dicussing my army training. i elaborated about the soviet era weapon and then he explained that he wanted me to read a few manuals and teach myself (under his tutelage) how to program in the rpg/ii language. -bret myrick

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          • #6
            Is it just me?

            so when an RPG II/III/IV program blows up, hmmmmmm.... rd

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            • #7
              Is it just me?

              bibarnes quoted IBM as asking ,"What PTF Level are you at" One should never end a sentence with a preposition. Dave

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              • #8
                Is it just me?

                "Ending a sentence with a preposition is a proposition, up with which I will not put." Winston Churchill In other words, it's perfectly acceptable, to avoid awkward wording. Chris

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                • #9
                  Is it just me?

                  It's a great line. But in most cases, it's not awkward at all. In fact, the use of "at" at the end of most sentences is superfluos. e.g. - "Where are you at?" may be easily replaced by "Where are you?" I was surprised by IBM's use of grammatical jargon. Deliberate use of bad grammar for stylistic purposes, or just plain street talk has been an American custom for 230 years. Complaints arising from the use of slang have persisted for the same length of time. In English, one can trace the practice all the way back to Chaucer, and perhaps earlier. I am unaware of other languages having as many idioms as English. Dave

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                  • #10
                    Is it just me?

                    David, But in most cases, it's not awkward at all. We concur. I was objecting to your use of the word "never" in your other post. Chris

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                    • #11
                      Is it just me?

                      Is it just me, or as there been an inexorable change at IBM over the past year or so? I have noticed a lack of QC in OS releases (V5R4 has given us loads of grief). Technical support has gotten like MS where you call support and it takes days and weeks to get a problem resolved. The shop I am in has placed the i5 on DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) status. There is no new development and plans are being formulated to move our flagship application off the i5 and into Windows Sql Server .NET environment. IBM is sitting on their hands with their heads in the sand ignoring the problem. They are no longer the 800lb gorilla. Slowly but surely they are losing ground to MS. How do they react? In our case, ignore it. We recently took the plunge into RSE (well I did anyway). It has the potential to be a really good product. Right now it is buggy, stodgy, and difficult to use. One recognized bug is not being addressed until the next release because they "could not replicate the problem in the new release". The SQLRPGLE compile process is worse in RSE than it is in SEU. Trying to figure things out is tantamount to finding the Holy Grail. IMHO IBM started losing the battle when they, first, ignored GUI and then when they came up with WebSphere. I attended a seminar at the San Antonio Common on a "Success" store for WebSphere. The project to convert took almost 2 years and cost over 1.5 million dollars. They had to upgrade their iSeries, and replace all PC workstations. They sent 70% of their programming staff to school for Java while the remaining 30% stayed back in RPG. It was over budget and late, and considered a success. It sounds like a DOT project. I am afraid that IBM is going the way of the Edsel. A great concept but lacking in appeal. For me the insistence that we move from SEU to RSE is the icing on the cake. It is nice, but. I still have to go back to SEU to do things. I can't seem to keep the plugins plugged in when we upgrade. Debug is flaky at best and ridiculous at worst. I read the posts on teh WDSc email everyday and mostly get confused just trying to figure out which answer goes with which question. If they were serious it would be more of a forum like this and others. I will be interested in the responses I get. I will be willing to bet that there will be none that are wishy washy. It will either be "hang this fool" or "right on". It is a shame that the i5 may not survive and that legacy has become a four letter word. It has gotten so bad that those of us with the business knowledge aren't even considered to be of any value.

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