Joe,
I don't think you need to know everything listed in this description, but
there is no reason that a decently good programmer can't be very familiar
with most of it.
I've only been out of school for three years, and while I don't use
everything listed every day, I'm familiar with most. And I don't even
consider myself one of the best programmers out there.
Modern RPGIV - check
subprocedures - check
use of C or Java functions from RPG - familiar with the approach even if I
don't use them, could if I had/needed to.
embedded SQL - check
XML processing - I prefer JSON, but I'm familiar with XML and could pick
this up if needed.
RDi - Use WDSC7 until we upgrade
PHP - check
Java - check
.Net - rather not
HTML, Javascript,CSS - check.
When you break it down and look at a span of projects over 3 to 5 years, I
really fail to see how having these skills would be that difficult to come
by. Unless you are stuck in a shop that does RPGII programming only I
would suspect that most programmers on this platform have at least half
this stuff in their tool box.
Using PHP to generate javascript to generate HTML? Who does that? And
why on earth would you? Write HTML where you need it, Javascript where
you need it, and keep the PHP on the server doing stuff that can't be done
on the client side. AJAX is way more than a passing fad and is quickly
becoming the standard for web application data driven development. To
develop in a mix'em up/mash'em up way makes for highly unmaintainable and
sluggish solutions. Taking a more MVC approach and using each technology
as it is intended usually works best in the long run.
Joe, I respect everything you have done. You are a great asset to the IBM
i community, but I don't think it is very demanding to have the toolbox
that Jon and Susan suggest.
Thanks
Bryce Martin
Programmer/Analyst I
570-546-4777
Joe Pluta <joepluta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent by: rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
02/18/2010 04:59 PM
Please respond to
RPG programming on the IBM i / System i <rpg400-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To
RPG programming on the IBM i / System i <rpg400-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
cc
Subject
Re: Load-All Subfile Performance (Was:"Constant" performance question)
GKern@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
"Okay, Scott, I'll bite: What do you suggest?"
I'm not Scott but from an article I read this morning by Jon Paris and
Susan Gantner:
"What skills should you have as a minimum?
Modern RPG IV, subprocedures, use of C and Java functions from
RPG, embedded SQL, XML processing, etc.
Modern development tools such as IBM's RDi
A modern Web programming language such as PHP, Java, or .NET,
plus
the ability to interface them with RPG business logic
HTML, CSS, and JavaScript
Respectfully, that's a bit of overkill. No one person needs to know all
of that unless you're the jack of all trades for your company, and
frankly unless you've got a whole lot of spare time on your hands,
you're not going to learn all of it.
You absolutely need a solid grounding of RPG IV and ILE concepts, with
free format being a high priority. You should know BIFs inside and out,
and there are a few C functions that will help you. SQL is crucial.
And of course you should know RDP.
After that, it's very much a mix and match that depends on your goals
and those of your company. If you're a true Blue shop, Java is the next
language to learn, although the enforced object orientation and pure
class-based environment is a huge jump from the world of RPG.
HTML, CSS and JavaScript? In general, you should only need enough to be
able to understand a basic web page. If you use EGL you need to know
very little of these things. On the other hand, if you're going to use
a scripting language like PHP, you'll need to become quite expert,
because you'll effectively be using PHP to generate JavaScript, often to
generate HTML.
If you're in a Microsoft shop, learn enough about .NET to know how to
talk to those folks. Then, concentrate on delivering your business
logic as web services and/or stored procedures. Do not, I repeat, do
not worry about Java.
XML depends on your business. Generating XML is a piece of cake,
parsing is a royal pain. Do you as an RPG programmer need to be parsing
XML documents? Not necessarily. But certainly you should know what it
does and how to read XML data, if only to be sure you're getting what
you think you're getting. Plus it's a little different depending on
whether you're using XML in web services or you're doing some other sort
of data transfer. Because (you knew I'd get to this, right?) if you
know EGL, you can create web services with literally a dozen lines of
code, and then pass that data to your RPG programs as data structures,
no XML knowledge needed.
So yeah, you need to expand your horizons. But there are easy ways and
hard ways, and no matter what, you should know what your career goals
are, because those goals will definitely help you decide what you need
to learn.
Joe
midrange.com
