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It's Time to Get out of the Stone Age

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  • #61
    It's Time to Get out of the Stone Age

    ** This thread discusses the article: It's Time to Get out of the Stone Age **
    If you're looking for the "best in all cases" you are simply making an argument to stay where you are. Why? Because "Better is the enemy of good enough". You can never find something that is perfect is best in all cases. Yet, sticking with RPGIII is in fact, saying that it is best in all cases.

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    • #62
      It's Time to Get out of the Stone Age

      ** This thread discusses the article: It's Time to Get out of the Stone Age **
      Yes, you've got it. I didn't own a Pink Oven in 1986. I don't do RPG III programming in 2006. Glad somebody at least knew when Pink Ovens were popular!

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      • #63
        It's Time to Get out of the Stone Age

        ** This thread discusses the article: It's Time to Get out of the Stone Age **
        Once all the Cities are builts, there is no longer a use for the volume of Steel that was being used to build the Cities. What do you do if you're a Steel Worker? You either sit there waiting for your company to pay you more. Or you sit there and wait to get laid off. If you're clever, you start learning and then advocating competive technologies that will help you maintain your employment. Or, we call become profressional web surfers instead.

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        • #64
          It's Time to Get out of the Stone Age

          ** This thread discusses the article: It's Time to Get out of the Stone Age **
          I have been working in the IBM midrange field for 25 years-System 3,34,36,38,AS/400 and iSeries. Being both an IT manager for small installations and a consultant for many larger companies later, you have to realize the dynamics of a managing a small midrange shop of a staff of say 10 people or less. It is hard to get down on one knee and ask for anything from some pencil pushing bean counter that controls the purse strings. You can not go to that pencil pushing bean counter and say: " We want to convert all of our green screen RPG III applications to e-RPG using CGI. There are utilities that will help us, but they do cost some money. The project will take some time" The pencil pushing bean counter will say: " What! Spend more money! Don't you know my bonus check at the end of the year depends on keeping my budget in line! Look Mr. IT manager, if you can't work with the budget I give you, I will find somebody that can! We might even out source your whole department! Your job is to run this shop with software we know works, with the system that is paid for already and the budget I give you.Now just run the month end 3-4 times; until we get the numbers the way we like them; so we send the numbers to corporate and keep those people off my back!" It is the pencil pushing bean counter that is the true reactionary thinker.

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          • #65
            It's Time to Get out of the Stone Age

            ** This thread discusses the article: It's Time to Get out of the Stone Age **
            Am I advocating fundamental technology changes for the benefit of the business or for the benefit of my career ? Don't get me wrong, I like technology and I am prepared to work at it but I am put off by the hoops I am forced to jump through just to display a stock balance. I find it all very idiosyncratic in nature and not as robust. The SMB market should not be in the business of software development in my opinion. A nice ERP system that is flexible and can be configured is what we are looking for.

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            • #66
              It's Time to Get out of the Stone Age

              ** This thread discusses the article: It's Time to Get out of the Stone Age **
              For the bean counters the capital expense for technology is something they want to avoid, particularly with economy the way it is in manufacturing. Making that transition from "legacy" to GUI can be a tough sale to these people. In my position, I simply do not have the resources to make that leap without some significant capital expense and an increase in head count. So in the meantime, I dabble with the basics hoping to wow somebody from intertia into action.

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              • #67
                It's Time to Get out of the Stone Age

                ** This thread discusses the article: It's Time to Get out of the Stone Age **
                My business perspective: Change to a new technology if it increases profits? Sure! Change an interface because a clerk will think it looks more modern and 'pretty'? Absurd! It's easy enough to find a clerk who doesn't need 'pretty' to do the work. We PAY the clerk to use the system we have. My programmer perspective: I think the Steel Worker comment gets to the meat of the push for change. We've already written every application. Now we will be out of work unless we create work by re-coding all of the applications.

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                • #68
                  It's Time to Get out of the Stone Age

                  ** This thread discusses the article: It's Time to Get out of the Stone Age **
                  It's not just the data entry clerks, guys!! You're going to lose your best programmers to companies that use the new technology! Shortly after the AS400 hit the market, I trained the programmers at a local shop of a well-known international bank (since merged with JP Morgan I think) in AS400 programming. They were all hot-shot coders, great techs all, but they had just acquired their new AS400. The ONLY reason they got it, or the main one, they were LOSING THEIR PROGRAMMERS to the shops who were getting the new technology. It doesn't take a prophet to see what's coming for us, most especially if we don't get ourselves and our complacent RPG brethren into the present! Let alone the future! I just recently escaped from an AS400 shop where the code at least wasn't RPG-II, but for goodness' sake it was old old old style RPGIII. Because an IT manager, who'd been there thirty years, didn't know how to program anything newer and couldn't learn! But he wanted his staff to just code what he could read. IT Managers: What's more, if you're an IT manager, that last scenario could be right behind you. That company I mentioned above got sold (surprise! surprise!) to another company that promptly outsourced them to Computer Science Corp, with the idea of eventually migrating to Oracle. It's a snail's pace and I'm not impressed with their techs, but so what? CSC has some fantastic employee benefits, especially in the matter of all kinds of on-line training and resources for upgrading skills, and I still did not stay there because I would be stuck in an old system patching up old code and under certain constraints that severely limited keeping up. Not for the sake of having new stuff, but the kinds of things at least that Cozzi is talking about ->multiplies your productivity<-! And not only your productivity, it multiplies the kinds of things you can handle, and increases the demand for your skills. We see Web sites all over the place doing all kinds of things! Why shouldn't we be doing this in our i5 shops!?! Hunh? Our system does everything theirs does, and better! But how are the users going to know our system is a can-do system if we don't SHOW them that it can! Look what happened with a piece-of-junk OS that Win 3.1 was and W95 and W98 and WindowsME, reminded me of those pix of cars held together with hanger wire! And yet, and in spite of its near-uselessness and productivity-killer capriciousness, the users brought their PC's into their jobs and forced us to accomodate them, and then the Ivory-tower bean counters got Visicalc, and then they got networks, and now I'm doing a big bunch of reports with output to Excel files! So if we RPG coders don't get their act together, the future will become the present and rain on our parade! But don't worry, it's an exciting future coming our way, because coding gets easier, our product gets more powerful, takes over more territory, we get to do more and better things with our skills, help more people, make more money, attract more young code-jockeys, and all the rest! Yeah! ..Alan

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                  • #69
                    It's Time to Get out of the Stone Age

                    ** This thread discusses the article: It's Time to Get out of the Stone Age **
                    I also have worked with the 38 and 400 since their beginnings. And if there is anything I have learned in 30 years of IT it's that usability and functionality are what counts. We who work in the real world of IT, unlike some consultants, are in the business of providing our company with applications that meet the needs of the business, not the latest "cool" technology. Don't get me wrong; I am not against new technology. In fact I have been implementing we based RPG HTML applications as much as possible where I work, but only where it makes sense to do so. I don't have the luxury to decide one day to completely replace the distribution or order entry or AR portions of our "Stone Age" "green screen" off-the-shelf ERP system with a GUI version just because it's "cool" and modern. Nor can I decide one morning to apply all my resources to converting all the RPG II/III programs to RPG IV for with no immediate advantage to the users. I use RPG IV when it provides a benefit to accomplishing the task at hand, not because it's the modern version of RPG or because I am trying to change people’s opinion of RPG or the iSeries. Sorry Bob, I understand your frustration with other people's uninformed opinions of RPG and the iSeries, but new technology for new technology's sake is just plain wrong. Ron

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                    • #70
                      It's Time to Get out of the Stone Age

                      ** This thread discusses the article: It's Time to Get out of the Stone Age **
                      I take issue with your comment about people using CL rather than RPG,.. because, of course, I do this often. What is smart or not behind the scenes (no user marketing here) is contextual and personal. Most of what I do revolves around data extraction. Quite often users seem more keen on receiving a csv file they can manipulate (and probably print more attractively with PC software) rather than an iSeries report program. I use CL when I have an SQL extraction because my experience of putting it in an RPGLE is that it is more verbose and complicated. After a few successful implementations of SQL in free, that were admittedly cool, I discovered that it was still easier and quicker for me to put the data extraction back in the CL and use the RPG just for the "presentation", ie the report. Following MVC principles, even when I write a report I separate presentation from extraction, so I still have a seprate data extraction program. When we get V5R4 with embedded SQL in free and without those '+' signs at the end of the line then I will consider putting it in RPG again. Since we are concerned with what the users think, it can be reasonably affirmed that they do not care whether the file they received was generated in an RPG or CL program. They do care about not having to wait too long to see their programming requests fulfilled. Furthermore, by separating the SQL and making it the central piece of programming I am prepared for what your article suggests in subtext: a platform migration!

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                      • #71
                        It's Time to Get out of the Stone Age

                        ** This thread discusses the article: It's Time to Get out of the Stone Age **
                        ronahoover wrote: Nor can I decide one morning to apply all my resources to converting all the RPG II/III programs to RPG IV for with no immediate advantage to the users. It is not the easiest thing in the world to convert RPG II programs. In some cases, a complete redesign is necessary. OTOH RPG III conversion does not require any resources at all. You can convert all of the source in a single library with the use of a single command. Then (and this is the neat part) do nothing. Just because the source has been converted, does not mean that you have to compile all of that source at once, and then test every single program. Just do what you would normally do - that is when an individual program requires a change, or an update just work on that one program, and test it as you normally would. This eliminates the need to allocate any extra resources. Over a period of time, most of your programs will have been fully compiled and tested, and they will have been written in RPG IV. Good luck with the RPG II code. Dave

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                        • #72
                          It's Time to Get out of the Stone Age

                          ** This thread discusses the article: It's Time to Get out of the Stone Age **
                          Frankly, I think putting everything away from CL and putting in RPG is an overkill at this point. However consider this. IBM's enhancements to CL are at a snail's pace as compared to RPG. Furthermore RPG is looking more and more like C. As you know, C's I/O sucks unless you use SQL. To summarize, if you can take as much away from CL and put into RPG, and use free format RPG, and use max SQL, you will not only have portable software, you skills will also be portable and you wont find yourself in the agony of being without work or the agony of trying to learn an entirely different platform.

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                          • #73
                            It's Time to Get out of the Stone Age

                            ** This thread discusses the article: It's Time to Get out of the Stone Age **
                            I admit I have seen lot many shops running AS/400 running in S36 mode using RPGII. It is because the I.T. Manager is unwilling or unable to learn. Even worse, he is deliberately keeping it that way for job security as he thinks it would make him indespensible as nobody knows what is going on. As a reality check, these shops are getting fewer and fewer. Unlike these legacy I.T. Managers who are in their shops for over 20 years, I work for a shop for a max of two years and sometimes even three months. In the past 27 years I have seen a lot. I have seen untouchables go down big time. Twenty years of service and a reputation of being the "one man show". Then suddenly there is a merger or takeover. One fine morning the security guard will escort him out. After 25 years in the business I believed myself that I was an old dog who can not learn new trick. I went back to school and passed my diploma in web development with straight honors. So much for myths of old age ... and I was always an average student in my youth!

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                            • #74
                              It's Time to Get out of the Stone Age

                              ** This thread discusses the article: It's Time to Get out of the Stone Age **
                              Thanks for proving the point I was trying to make in the article. Just keep justifying 5250 stone age stuff, and suddenly you're going to obsolete as is your software. Sure you can use the excuse that your been counter won't approve it. I would love to ask Hillary Swank out on a date, but I "know what she'll say". But unless I do ask, it WILL NEVER happen.

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