Re: Help required to stop this company replacing their iSeries

   Mark wrote: Hire well-rounded people that have demonstrated an eagerness
   to learn and train them yourselves. You will probably get the best
   programmers you have ever had. RPG is a very easy language to learn, and
   OS/400 is probably the easiest OS to program for because it does so much
   for you.

   aec...>> And a hearty Amen! to that.  And when you have to do CL
   programming, you get those easy-to-remember keyword parameters, and it's
   so easy to do your own commands if you need to! (Although I try to keep my
   programming closer to the nitty-gritty (RPG of course, though I could
   really like doing the other languages on it).

   Mike again:  Allow the programmer to use WDSC and the latest RPG coding
   techniques and it should not be terribly hard for someone with a
   background in other languages to learn RPG. You might even benefit from
   their knowledge of things like SQL and code separation from using the
   languages they know.  

   aec...>> Lots and lots of us grey-haired guys just picked up RPG out in
   the real world anyway, already. In fact you can take back to the boss that
   in my unscientific anecdotal experience, most working RPG programmers
   didn't even get their start in formal training. And that's from somebody
   who's trained a lot of them in vocational schools and non-credit college
   courses and the like.

   In fact one of the best things that could happen in the world of RPG
   programmers is to get some hot-shot tech guys out of college that are used
   to doing GUI stuff and get them into RPG, and they'll apply it to the new
   stuff, and help provide new momentum...

   Joel did that with his RPGX or whatever he called it! Joel!

   --Alan