Forum to last for 99.999?

[nycsusan@hotmail.com]

Forum to last for 99.999?

Please don't get so uptight and defensive when I imply/state someone is a dinosaur, cause I'm looking directly in the mirror! I'm just tweaking your noses for ideas on what work to seek in the future. Mike, I am not enamored with Cobol, nor do I advocate sitting pat with any skills. I have spent well over a thousand dollars, probably over two thousand dollars by now, to take classes at night and on weekends to learn new skills. I am responding to your posts because I feel that there are ways to stimulate and discussions about future IT work without labeling Cobol programmers as “dinosaurs", and without saying that all Cobol/RPG work is maintenance and conversions. I dispute that assertion, but for fun and grins let’s say you are 100% correct. What have you gained by putting down the skills that most of the people in this forum use? How is that helpful, particularly when is difficult to change jobs even if you wanted to? Instead of putting down Cobol and RPG and the AS/400, why not talk up whatever language or platform you believe has a bright future? That would be a constructive discussion. It is possible to say a negative thing in a positive way. Okay, now, what are your ideas for the future? What skills look good to you? And on what platform(s)? You have stated what you don't like, now please tell us what you do like.

[Guest.Visitor]

Forum to last for 99.999?

If you want to see a better definition of 'dead' look up 2 of our 3 eCommerce 'partners' that went belly up.

[cwscholbe@dstsystems.com]

Forum to last for 99.999?

Mike, I don't understand your reference or how to look up your eCommerce partners. Are you suggesting that these companies failed because they used RPG or Cobol? or because they used an AS/400?

[Guest.Visitor]

Forum to last for 99.999?

Actually the opposite Chris. Well not that they're out of business because they're not on the 400. We are a 400 shop and outsourced all our web stuff to these great eBusiness buzz machines and 2 of the 3 are no longer around. I guess the Java gurus that were once obnoxiously walking thru our offices on their cell phones are now on the phone with the recruiters!

[nycsusan@hotmail.com]

Forum to last for 99.999?

I guess the Java gurus that were once obnoxiously walking thru our offices on their cell phones are now on the phone with the recruiters! Several IT recruiters I talk to have told me that some of the Java programmers that got a six figure salary last year from the dot-coms are now having to look at jobs in the neighborhood of $65K. All the dot coms going under, and the H1-B workers, have saturated the market, at least in my area. So what's next for the IT world? What is the next "hot skill"?

[Guest.Visitor]

Forum to last for 99.999?

Susan, you haven't signed up for your C# classes yet?

[R.Daugherty]

Forum to last for 99.999?

Knowing a business or an industry and being able to tie together silos to cost effectively provide a synergistic data processing system with an intuitive interface, regardless of the technologies involved. Corporations are awash in incompatible systems based on a wide variety of technologies, and they have quit listening to IT people and their blurry, prohibitively expensive visions. Those who can produce efficient solutions out of the potpourri of systems out there, from RPG to Java and every GUI in between, and are flexible enough and smart enough to deal with it all at an interface level, have the skill that is always hot and becomes even more valuable as pending on new systems comes to a crawl. Ralph

[Guest.Visitor]

Forum to last for 99.999?

Susan: I've been focusing on OO rather than any specific language. ...although there aren't that many OO languages. My thinking was, that even though I can't stand Uncle Bill either, he will probably rule most of the IT world for awhile. What's wrong with learning COM, DCOM, .NET, C# as well as CORBA, Linux/Unix, and Java? IBM hates Uncle Bill also, so, they are concentrating on the CORBA model. Doesn't hurt to have some knowledge of the rest of the world either. I figure if you get the OO stuff down, the OO languages are similar and you should be able to pick up the syntax and it won't matter what platform you work on. Not like now, where we are almost religiously tied to 1 machine. My problem as been with the as/400 world. We are slooooooooooow at looking at anything besides RPG II or III. (or COBOL as in your case). I've been doing VARPG projects and it's fun and it works well, but, you need an as/400 to make it work. Same goes for RPG CGI for building web pages. Not real transferable skills. But, you know, there is merit to learning COBOL if you're planning to stick with the 400. Like you said there is work there and probably will be for awhile.

[nycsusan@hotmail.com]

Forum to last for 99.999?

Mike, You mentioned Java & Microsoft ... What do you make of the Microsoft announcement, I think it was about 2 weeks ago, regarding Java? Do you that will put a damper on Java? And I agree that AS/400 shops tend to be slow at looking beyond RPG & Cobol. I chalk that up to the fact that most 400 shops tend to be small, and therefore lack the budget and the staff to seek new technologies and languages.

[Guest.Visitor]

Forum to last for 99.999?

Susan: Microsoft's announcement concerned Windows XP (due out in October)and I think there was a link in one of the Wednesday morning update thingies. From what I got from it, Internet Explorer under XP won't run any Java applets. There is a fix already to get around and it probably won't be too big a deal. I think it will make software companies think more about what langauge and sandbox to develop in and wonder what Uncle Bill will pull next. It might prompt some to develop in .NET/C# instead of Java. I dunno. Java has the hype, the juice, the sizzle, and the band wagon. Busniess applications are being created and sold, EXCEPT, in the as/400 world. Imagine, the world's premier and fastest Java machine, has no application you can buy that utilizes Java. The world's premier and fastest Java machine has to be demo'ed with a green screen interface.

[Guest.Visitor]

Forum to last for 99.999?

Could be burger flipping. About 18 months ago I was seriously considering taxi driving. :-( Dave...

[Guest.Visitor]

Forum to last for 99.999?

Someone, sowhere today, is making buggy whips

Luckily there are always a few maintenance people around to iron the bugs out of those whips. :-) Dave...

[Guest.Visitor]

Forum to last for 99.999?

Referencing you H1-B feelings .. did you see the article in the New York Times saying that B2B is being interpreted to mean Back-to-Bombay and Bogota is portions of the duh.com unemployed.

[nycsusan@hotmail.com]

Forum to last for 99.999?

Susan, you haven't signed up for your C# classes yet? Actually Michael, I will do that just as soon as I finish up my Visual and Object Oriented Cobol classes.

[Guest.Visitor]

Forum to last for 99.999?

Haphazardly Selected iSeries400 news and tools sites and what Webserver and OS they run, just because I was curious: These sites are running IBM-HTTP-Server/1.0 on AS/400. www.midrangeserver.com www.common.org www.the400resource.com www.lansa.com www.as400.ibm.com www.businesslink.com is running Strategi HTTPD V1R8M0 on AS/400 www.inetmi.com is running CommerceServer400/1.0 on AS/400. These sites are running Microsoft-IIS/4.0 on NT4/Windows 98. www.as400network.com www.midrangecomputing.com www.seagullsw.com www.jacada.com www.duke.com www.asna.com www.the400group.com is running Netscape-Enterprise/4.1 on NT4/Windows 98. Other search400.techtarget.com is running Apache/1.3.12 (Unix) on Solaris. www.ibm.com is running IBM_HTTP_Server/1.3.12.2 Apache/1.3.12 (Unix) on unknown. www-1.ibm.com is running Domino-Go-Webserver/4.6.2.7 on AIX.