Just got an email that the president of MCPress, Merrikay Lee, is moving on to other things.  You can read the press release here.

I got to know Merrikay over the years because we both ended up at the various trade shows where she would be at her booth and I would be at mine.  While the attendees were in class we would chit chat about life.  What a great gal with many great qualities – she will be missed by the IBM i community.  I do however believe that what she intends to do with her time is of greater value in the big picture.  Here is an excerpt from the article:

Not surprisingly, Lee still intends to keep her hand in the world of publishing after she leaves MC Press Online but will combine her literary talents with her strong faith. She will serve as director of Curriculum Development for Biblical Education by Extension (BEE), an organization that provides seminary-level Biblical training to pastors and church leaders who live in restricted-access countries and who serve the persecuted church.

Merrikay, I hope for the best as you pursue this next big adventure in life.

For those of you who don’t know, I have started a new initiative late last year named www.SoftwareSavesLives.com.  The SoftwareSavesLives site came about from a number of things happening in my life the past couple years that have caused me to live for something more than myself (you can read more here).  In summary, SoftwareSavesLives.com is meant to be a place for developers to sell their software and have 1/2 of each sale be given to an organization that is meeting needs of people in dire situations (i.e. digging clean water wells in Africa, feeding starving families in Haiti, etc).

We have officially made some money from two different customers which gave us the immense pleasure of writing a check for $1,400 to Kids Against Hunger in Mankato, MN.  KidsAgainstHunger packages meals and sends them to locations in dire need of food (i.e. Haiti).  They can produce a meal for 23 cents.  That means we were able to provide over 6,000 meals with the $1,400 donation!

The first company I would like to thank is DanceRace of the UK. They helped finance some of the initial research and development done for RPGUI and 25% of those dollars went to www.SoftwareSavesLives.com.  On a personal note, if you ever get a chance to meet Anthony Avison (Chief Executive of DanceRace), your time will not be wasted.  He is not only a fun geek to talk to about architectural things, but also has a heart the size of Africa.  Anthony, thanks for taking a chance with me and RPGUI.

The second company is Grand Western who made a purchase of RPGMailEnterprise (an upgrade from the free RPGMail that has many more features and includes the source when you purchase it).  RPGMailEnterprise can be purchased at the introductory price of $300 (includes full source).

If you would like to sell your software on www.SoftwareSavesLives.com then please contact me at aaronbartell@gmail.com.  We don’t have a lot of red tape -  we just want to make a difference in the world we live in.

Note to all who are not currently subscribed as a registered RPG Cafe user.

The RPG Cafe has officially moved to the developerWorks site.  This is a good thing in my mind because it means the RPG folks get to share some of the same web site infrastructure with the other more popular, though less efficient(grin), languages.

Check it out here: developerWorks RPG Forum

Having the RPG forum hosted on an IBM site is good because it legitimizes RPG AND the compiler people hang out there.  You can let your voice he heard!

AaronBartell.com

Welp, the writing has been on the wall for this announcement to happen.  There was a leaked Oracle memo that basically says the OpenSolaris OS is going to be put on ice and that Oracle has plans to make Solaris not only a sustainable OS but also a profitable one – the #1 Enterprise server they say. You can read more here: http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/opensolaris-discuss/2010-August/059310.html

Why is this important you ask?

Well, it is important because Solaris, actually CAN compete in a space similar to IBMi whereas Windows Server is still a sugar coated poison apple.  Observation: Oracle now owns a server hardware platform (SPARC), owns a very popular commercial DB (self titled), owns thee most popular open source DB (MySQL), owns thee most popular language (Java) that can be used on the server, the desktop and devices (i.e. handhelds, printers, set top boxes, etc).  When you own all of those and have the ambition and money to make them integrated, well, it starts to sound like another company that had similar ambitions (and success) with a machine back in 1987 (IBM and the birth of AS400 for the layman).

I REALLY wish IBM would realize the absolute gem they have with IBMi and start taking it places.  In the coming 8 years Oracle will replace IBM as the top IT company in the world (my prediction).

Thoughts?

AaronBartell.com

Sounds like the predictable has finally happened since Oracle purchased SUN and subsequently now owns Java – arguably the most used/pursued programming language in the world.

Oracle has sued Google for how it is using Java on/in it’s Android platform

This isn’t really a surprise because Oracle isn’t as community friendly as SUN was. Guess maybe that is why they are still in business – they don’t give everything away for free.  One has to wonder where IBM stands with Oracle’s ownership of Java and IBM’s head-over-heals adoption of Java in it’s MANY code bases and software packages.  If I was IBM I would be greatly concerned because Oracle and IBM compete for a lot of the same contracts.

Starting to make IBM’s entirely-privately-owned-RPG very appealing, isn’t it?  Here’s the question many have asked before me: What if IBM started putting extensive development into the RPG language and getting IBMi in the cloud at a crazy reasonable price (i.e. $10/month)?  IBM needs to think more like drug dealers – get the user hooked with excellent product and THEN get their money.

Thoughts?

AaronBartell.com

IBMSystemsMag.com just published my latest article titled “Tweaking Open Source TN5250j”.  The open source and free TN5250j emulator is what I use 99% of the time for all of my green screen access to the various IBM i machines I connect to.  This article shows how to make a modification to the TN5250j code base from start to finish.

Check it out by clicking here!

Just got off a call with a customer of mine in North Carolina who I am coaching on moving forward with RDPi (fka WDSC and RDi).  Over the weekend he installed RDPi on his work machine and it blew up.  We didn’t get into details, but I am guessing it was because he already had a previous version of RDi installed.  Anyways, he called IBM RDPi support to get help with the demo install so he could decide if they want to purchase this product (btw, they already own multiple licenses of RDi+SOA, but I told them they don’t need that if they are only doing RPG development and not EGL) and support told my customer that they couldn’t help them BECAUSE THEY DIDN’T OWN THE PRODUCT YET.

What’s wrong with this picture?

My customer eventually did get the product installed on his home computer and is testing from there.

IBM has forgotten about customer service in many areas (not all).  They forget that even though they enjoy working with companies that spending millions in software, those aren’t the companies of tomorrow.  The companies of tomorrow will be run by those coming out of college and they aren’t accustomed to IBM’s awkward customer service practices.

I am of the mind that IBM has incredible opportunity in the coming years to be a top player in technology.  But it is only an opportunity – it isn’t guaranteed money.  It will only come if they choose to start streamlining their processes of customer service and rip out old processes.  They need to give control back to sectors of IBM at a smaller scale to see who can make things work well (to see how things don’t work well, try ordering RPG Open Access from IBM).

Maybe I am just a little pissy because it is so hot in MN right now (humid and heat index at/over 100 degrees)…

Frustrated in 100 degree MN weather,

AaronBartell.com

Some of Google’s employees are frustrated by the complicated languages like Java and C++ and question whether they should be used.  They have gotten so frustrated that they have created their own new programming language named “Go”.

I’m telling you, the tides are turning.  The IT industry has spent the last 5 to 10 years chasing sugar-coated-poison-apples of “modern programming languages” like Java and .NET and PHP.  These languages are considered modern mostly because they can more easily speak to the browser and other flavor-of-the-year UI technologies (i.e. Flex, Silverlight, JavaFX, ExtJS) and not because they are actually good languages to use in your business.  The complexities and constant changes in these languages aren’t good things and is instead more of a statement to “I did it wrong the first time so I will keep trying to fix it whilst having sand for a foundation”.

Makes me wish Google could take a peek at RPG and gleam from it’s many great features of simplicity (i.e. intimate database integration and simple modularity).

You can read the article I am speaking of here: http://infoworld.com/d/developer-world/google-executive-frustrated-java-c-complexity-375

You can check “Go” out here: http://golang.org

I haven’t done anything with Go yet – anybody else?

AaronBartell.com

I like laughing, so I look for the humor in things a lot.  But it isn’t often that I laugh to the point of tears, and the following story almost brought me there…. so I wanted to share it with you :-)  The below was an email forward – I do not know the people in the story, nor do I know if it is true.

The pastor asked if anyone in the congregation would like to express praise for answered prayers. Suzie Smith stood and walked to the podium. She said, “I have a praise. Two months ago, my husband, Tom, had a terrible bicycle wreck and his scrotum was completely crushed. The pain was excruciating and the doctors didn’t know if they could help … See Morehim.” You could hear a muffled gasp from the men in the congregation as they imagine the pain that poor Tom must have experienced. “Tom was unable to hold me or the children,” she went on, “and every move caused him terrible pain.” We prayed as the doctors performed a delicate operation, and it turned out they were able to piece together the crushed remnants of Tom’s scrotum, and wrap wire around it to hold it in place.” Again, the men in the congregation cringed and squirmed uncomfortably as they imagined the horrible surgery performed on Tom. “Now,” she announced in a quivering voice, thank the Lord, Tom is out of the hospital and the doctors say that with time, his scrotum should recover completely.” All the men sighed with unified relief. The pastor rose and tentatively asked if anyone else had something to say.

A man stood up and walked slowly to the podium. He said, “I’m Tom Smith.” The entire congregation held its breath. “I just want to tell my wife …….. the word is sternum.”

You have a recent forward that was funny?  Post it in the comments!

Just got done ready an article in SDTimes.com that talks of how SQL isn’t necessarily the end-all for all programmatical DB access needs.  I find this intriguing because of the “native I/O” battles we seem to face from people stating it is “old” and should be abandoned when in reality native I/O is a priceless technology that can serve you quite well when used in the right scenarios – just as SQL is priceless when used in the right scenarios.

Here is the article for your reading pleasure: http://www.sdtimes.com/link/34483

Note that there are a lot of other thoughts and concepts included in that article, but some of it begs the question of “why do I need this distributed model” and many times my answer is this: “because there are so many engines running on top of each other (i.e. App servers, running on JVMs, running on OSes, running in a virtual machine, etc) that are not integrated  and thus need to be band-aided with failure point protection”. I am not at all against having a HA (High Availability) machine to protect against things like natural disasters, but so much of IT these days is protecting against bad foundational technologies that are seemingly constantly in their infancy – despite the fact that they come out with new versions faster than I can change underwear.

Having a language like RPG with intimate integration with IBM i and DB2, AND gives me native I/O and SQL capabilities, all the sudden becomes quite appealing.  Again, it is all about addressing what we as RPG programmers lack, and not trying to boil the ocean with mixing up our entire software development stack.

Thoughts?

AaronBartell.com