RE: Help required to stop this company replacing their iSeries

midrange-l-bounces+markp=softlanding.com@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote on 06/30/2006 
09:46:33 AM:

Actually just had a chat with the boss and he is full of praise for the 
iSeries, one of the reasons he/they are thinking about it is that he 

cannot 

get decent RPG programmers. "It is very difficult" he was saying "and 

all 

the ones we get are like you, grey haired, all the younger ones are 

going 

for Java and the like."

So what is the answer? I don't know.

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. 
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.

Just don't force them to learn RPG II/III and SEU.

Mark