Re: Midrange career choices

[Pete Hall <pbhall@xxxxxxxxxx>]

At 10:02 08/02/2000 , Buck Calabro wrote:
>With the apparent assimilation of all the midrange lines into one box, and
>the ability to run *nix on any of them, where does that leave a seasoned
>AS/400 programmer?  Put another way, what should I be doing to prepare for
>tomorrow?
>
>Is the dream job going to be "convert from OS/400 RPG to Linux C?"


That would be very ugly code.

I think there's plenty of room for the AS/400. It's not going to be hosting 
green screens, but there's too much power and ability built into the OS for 
it to just quietly go away in the face of Linux. You still need a propeller 
hat to integrate and maintain a nix box, I don't care what flavor it is. 
That's not what business is about. I think Linux might give NT a run for 
the desktop and departmental servers, but I'm betting on AS/400 as the 
business server of choice. IBM's been making somewhat encouraging little 
noises lately too. I read that if the AS/400 division were a separate 
company, it would be the largest computer manufacturer in the world after 
IBM. For the life of me, I can't understand how they kept the secret so 
well. I'm sure if it had involved a sex organ of some kind everyone in the 
universe would know about it.


Pete Hall
pbhall@execpc.com
http://www.execpc.com/~pbhall
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