Re: RPGILE programmers and the future of iSeries

Jerry,


I plan on working another twenty years. Over my thirty years of programming to date it appears that the more experience I have, the less clients want to pay for it. Everyone wants a bargain but you get what you pay for.

However, as the pool of available programmers diminishes, there will be more work available amongst fewer programmers. At that point my experience will have increased value and I will be able to command a higher bill rate. Let the kids play with Java and video game software. You want quality, well-documented business applications that work? Hire me.



Robert Munday
Munday Software Consultants
Montgomery, AL


-----Original Message-----
From: Jerry Draper <midrangel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Mar 28, 2012 1:46 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: RPGILE programmers and the future of iSeries

How can executive management justify keeping iSeries systems when the
pool of RPG programmers are of retirement age or so?

Is that a myth promulgated by *IX PHP folk?

At one place I am hearing that one justification for moving off of an
iSeries is that no "younger" programmers are interested in learning RPG
or it derivitives (ie: RPGILE).

Anyone else encountered this argument?

My view is that RPGILE is just another coding system with a learnable
syntax and that much of the user experience is via front ends written in
java or .net.

The iSeries is a great db engine serving up data to whoever wants it (or
is authorized to it). Tried, true, and trustworthy.

If we are all going to retire at the same moment will the iSeries go poof?

Jerry