Re: Recommendations for a newcomer?

RPG and COBOL are dead. No new development in these languages is being
done. Others on this list may disagree: I ask them to provide concrete
examples of development being done beyond a few modules in either language.
That being said, there are millions upon millions of lines of code in both
languages that will need maintenance and improvement for the next century
or so.

The problem is that RPG and COBOL are just not tool-able to the extent
others are.

If you want to be close to the metal, learn C. If you want to write very
high-level stuff using standard libraries and open source libraries, learn
Java. If you want to write code for PC that runs on Microsoft PC's learn
Visual Basic or C#. If you want to write mobile apps, learn Java or
Objective-C.

CL is easy and doesn't take long to learn. It is has limited applicability
besides IBMi system operations. If you want to be an IBMi systems operator
or systems administrator, learn CL.

Notice that nowhere do I mention C++. I think it is dead, too.

There are other languages that have niche markets; python and php, for
instance.

If you're going to do anything with user interfaces, learn html, xml,
javascript, CSS and xmlTransform .

There's no single language you can learn that is going to carry your
career. You're have to learn to learn new stuff every day.

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:
midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Clay B Carley
Sent: Tuesday, May 14, 2013 10:06 AM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Recommendations for a newcomer?

Being new to midrange systems, I'm attempting to pick up skills that
will be useful for me in the future, in hopes to get a job working with
them. Reading articles that say things like COBOL is uncool, and RPG is
worse isn't really giving me hope for a future working with a midrange
system though.

Is it going to be worth my time to learn things like CL, COBOL, and RPG
now? Or are they fading away? It would be pretty sad to finally become
proficient with these languages, only to find out that they are dead and
replaced with <blah> instead.

What would you recommend a newcomer focus on (aside from system
operations)?

Reading Rob's message from last week regarding "20 years of experience,
versus one year of experience repeated 20 times" looks like a pretty
good starting place I suppose. I'm really trying to look at where we're
going to be in the years to come, not necessarily tomorrow.

Thanks for any suggestions,
Clay Carley
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