The folks at System i Developer have graciously invited me again to speak at their conference. You can check out their announcement here: http://www.systemideveloper.com/announce2010Spring.html.
You can check out the sessions here: http://www.systemideveloper.com/sessiongrid.html
Among other sessions, I will be speaking on one of my latest passions: RPGUI
On that note, what are everybody’s projections for getting training this year? Are the purses still tight?
Well, I did it. I determined that purchasing an Apple Macbook Pro was the approach I should take to meet my personal/business computing needs at my workstation. What drove me to this decision? Well, I just can’t stand it when an OS screws me over without giving me recourse. That was the case a few weeks ago when I upgraded my Ubuntu Linux from 9.04 to 9.10. After upgrading I was presented with this error. I still haven’t been able to resolve the issue, even by going through Ubuntu’s fix recommendation (nor did the other many fixes I tried work). I lost sound (i.e. no Skype), printer/scanner capabilities, I couldn’t do a Find/Replace in RPGNextGen (the oddest of all the errors), and there were many other things that just aren’t working (probably because the drivers for those things aren’t matching the alternate kernel I have been booting into).
I have been contemplating moving to a Mac ever since Jon Paris has been giving it rave reviews. I have also heard from many others (Niels Liisberg, Mike Wills, Thorborn Anderson, etc) that love their Macs and are doing the same types of things that I need to accomplish (i.e. IBM i developer, survive in a Microsoft world, remote user, road warrior, music production, etc).
I am giddy right now because I haven’t had a new laptop in about 4 years (I have a T42 IBM Thinkpad). I ended up getting a Macbook Pro 17″, 4GB RAM, 500GB 7200rpm + AppleCare for a grand total of $3,074 (ouch, we will have to see if it was worth it). I plan on upgrading the RAM to 8GB for $400 (Apple was charging $600) and hopefully can go to a 256GB SSD (Solid State Drive) by the end of this year for around $500 (currently costs $700) - the SSD data transfer rates are AMAZING! Three thousand dollars is a lot of money to spend, but my time is worth a lot on both the billable hours front and also lessening frustration. I have yet to hear of ANYBODY not liking their Mac - that speaks volumes to me. Not that I won’t have problems, but having LESS problems is what I am reaching for. Same mindset I have for IBM i - yeah, I run into issues, but it is so much less than other programming stacks that it keeps me on the platform.
So, am I crazy for switching? Note I will still have Ubuntu on about 4 computers in my house because it does work for some scenarios. Who else is using Mac for their workstation? What downsides have you found?
Scott Klement had a good article in his newsletter today: http://systeminetwork.com/article/why-not-video-documentation
I am curious to know if the RPG community thinks video tutorials are a good thing? I personally think video tutorials are an excellent way to convey some scenarios that would have otherwise taken many cumbersome textual paragraphs to describe. I have also found that I make judgement calls on how modern a particular company or tool is based on whether or not they have video tutorials showing how to use different aspects of their offering (which reminds me, I should take inventory of what I have done for videos concerning RPG-XML Suite lately :-) I first realized how excellent technical video tutorials were when I was first learning Ruby On Rails (aka RoR). They had some excellent and simple tutorials that had me up and running in about 10 minutes - very cool.
So, what do others think about videos for documentation?
aaronbartell.com
Hi all! Tami Deedrick just informed me of my lastest article being published in IBMSystemsMag.com’s new digital approach. You can find the article here.
Let me know your thoughts!
aaronbartell.com
The longer I work with RPG+DB2+OS400 and compare it to other stacks, the more I love it for the integrated aspects. There are a number of IBM’ers that recognize the benefit of integrated, but I think those are relatively few compared to those that have jumped on the “Java is integrated” band wagon (which Java is pitifully not well integrated in OS400 if you ask me).
The reason for this post is because there is yet another HUGE initiative going on with big players (i.e. Microsoft and HP) to put together a more prepackaged system that is meant to ease the pain of integrated technologies. Timothy Pricket Morgan writes about it here.
Here’s what I think… If IBM were to give RPG a couple face lifts here and there (i.e. clean up the syntax and maybe add some more “meta data” features), make IBMi available in the cloud for incredibly reasonable prices for hobbyists and small businesses, and put together a marketing strategy around that, well, I think we could see a *start* to regaining ground instead of losing it. I am not saying everyone would jump ship from RoR and .NET and JSF to this infrastructure, but it would at least be a viable option.
It just pains me to see IBM always wanting to swim in the same pool that everybody else is peeing into instead of staying in their own pool where they have decades of infrastructure built that can give them serious competitive advantage. The crazy part is that they are competing against the company (i.e Oracle) that now owns their savior roadmap language and corresponding tooling (i.e. Java). Doesn’t anybody else see this as awkward?
On a lighter, and final note; I learned that if all you have is a single square of toilet paper to blow your nose with, well, you can make it work! :-)
I was on a call with a customer yesterday who is also a consultant and he mentioned that he was quite surprised by the standing the IBM i has in Europe. Surprised, that is, that it is doing much better than IBM i in US. He based this on comments that they have some lively ERP software packages actively being pursued. I didn’t get a chance to digress further to learn of the packages unfortunately, so make sure to research before putting any stock into that comment.
I was also on a Skype with Niels Liisberg the other day (IceBreak RPG framework developer in Denmark) and he mentioned some excellent embracing of techonology they are seeing as of late.
All this on the heels of me learning that a number of US AS400 shops deciding to migrate off the platform in 2009/2010. Given that Europe always seems to be a few steps ahead of the US on some fronts, I am wondering if they have already been down the path of trying to leave the platform and then realizing that leaving isn’t gaining anything? Or maybe they aren’t needing to learn it the hard way like we do in the US? :-)
Anybody from “across the pond” want to confirm what you are seeing in Europe?
I am always looking for good icons on http://images.google.com that I can use in my web apps, but free (and good looking) ones are often hard to find. The open source RPG framework PowerExt (www.PowerExt.com) uses icons from www.FamFamFam.com which are free and done well.
What other resources do others use? In particular, does anybody have a place they go for modern looking CSS (style sheets)?
A respected author on IT complexity has recently published a whitepaper detailing some of his recent findings which are quite staggering if true. You can see a critics review of the white paper at the following ZDNet Article(Click here).We are entering into a very interesting point in time as it relates to how IT departments pursue new technologies in an effort to meet business needs. For those that have pursued some of the initially appealing technologies out there, like I have, you know that it is very much a sugar coated poison apple. Why do I say that? Because if your fundamental programming stack isn’t intimately integrated then you will forever be looking for additional tools or methodologies to cover the holes.
The grossest perpetrator is XML web services. Don’t get me wrong, XML web services are a perfectly acceptable medium in some cases. For example, how else should you communicate with a remote entity that you have no control over than to use a generic format? - XML is a reasonable answer to that. But woe to the shop that introduces an ever changing, standards based, XML “bus” into their own application stack!
One of the next perpetrators is any language that isn’t intimately tied to the DB. I am specifcally targeting business minded applications in this statement, since they more than likely do A LOT of database interaction. One needs to look no further than the amount of work done on ORM (Object Relational Management) tools (i.e. think of them as language to DB proxies) and how many version iterations they have gone through over the years in their attempt to “get it right” to make DB interaction simple for languages like Java. Yes, I eventually get a connection to a DB from Java that is fairly reliable, but the amount of tools and work (i.e. man hours) it took to get to that point has become a larger than necessary amount of time compared to not having to worry about that in the least with RPG.
That’s not to say RPG isn’t without flaws (i.e. I am still waiting for long table and column name support IBM!!!), but I feel the flaws are much less in many areas.Of course RPG’s major flaw is it’s lack of a modern user interface that is productive for the programmer to develop. That is why I view things like RPGUI as extremely important, because it is one of the few things that RPG lacks, and if addressed could make it a leader in the application programming stacks of our time.
Thoughts? Am I unfair to other application programming stacks? Is anyone else seeing the same “fix one problem and create another” cyclical issue in IT today?
Aaron Bartell
www.SoftwareSavesLives.com
I am always intrigued by how we can keep IBM i shops “in business” by seeing what can be accomplished with RPG. Because of this I have started a new open source project titled “RPGUI” (aka RPG User Interface) and have started an article series with IBMSystemsMag.com to document it. Learn more on the RPGUI page.Note that this project is in the infancy stage and is more geared towards pioneer/learning-experience type personalities/shops.At a high level the purpose of the project is to give RPG programmers options for modern user interfaces. The first effort focuses on communicating with ExtJS from RPG.Thanks to Mihael Schmidt for his work with the JSON *SRVPGM that is used throughout the tool. What’s cool about this project is that it is utilizing the efforts of many different open source resources and combining them together for a solution.Are others out there in need of a solution like this? Is the time I spend on it worth it? Please note the solution is open source and free!
We have a new baby BOY in the Bartell family! His name is Wyatt Andrew Bartell and is the 5th and final child we are expecting :-)
Stats:
Weight: 9lbs 14.4 oz
Born: Thursday December 10th, 6:56pm
… hmm… that’s all I can remember for stats. But really, what else matters! ;-)
Mom and baby are both healthy. Wyatt is gulping down some mama milks right now, which he seems to be quite good at. Wyatt gave us quite the scare when his heart rate went down to low 60’s bpm. It was then that I put on my “brave father” hat and told Amanda she needed to try harder. No sooner had the words come out of my mouth that I realized I had only said it to myself - whew!
The newest member of the family has already helped his Dad implement some programming changes for a customer. I think he will be an excellent RPG developer when he grows up. Now I am off to schedule my appt with the “V Doctor”. I was going to do that surgery by myself, but I lost my favorite fingernail clippers.
The ever proud father,
Aaron Bartell