It depends what you mean by "old-school 5250/RPG shop" - we are a
5250/RPG shop that is by no means out-of-date - but if you mean a place
that still does RPGIII and will not let you call APIs - all that - well,
good luck.
If you mean that, by definition, 5250 & RPG are "old-school", I hope you
can adjust your thinking on that. Here we use RPG IV, some aspects of
ILE RPG, embedded SQL all over the place, several of Scott Klement's
tools for RPG, including IFS and POI, another set of things for Excel
from Giuseppe Costaglioli named SQL2JXL (for one) or SQL2POI. We also
use CGIDEV2 to generate very advanced XLSX workbooks with efficient
running, SFTP transfers, some JDBC stuff, I've installed ImageMagick and
GhostScript for recent challenges, - I don't consider this "old-school"
in any way - yes, we also have RPG II code in production!
Several of our team use RDi for development, as well.
I for one have worked quite a bit with the Open Access for RPG
functionality that has let me work with remote databases, MySQL, SQL
Server, Oracle, etc. using native RPG I/O - there has not been a
commercial version until recently when I did some work for an ISV along
these lines. Some vendors have applications that can run your
applications through the OAR process and do amazing things.
I suggest for things to look at, there is Bruce Vining's book, APIs at
Work - nothing better out there on this. Then there are some older an
recent Redbooks - Jon Paris, et al., wrote one some time ago and have a
draft of a revision out there now - it was posted about in these lists
yesterday or this morning.
And of course the movement into open source that IBM are really putting
a stake in.
Lots of stuff to enjoy - and the languages and directions you mention,
yes, those are probably places to look for future viability - I will
admit to being in the over 30 generation by a bit - heh - and still find
delight in learning all manner of new stuff.
Much regards
Vern
On 10/21/2016 11:14 AM, Justin Taylor wrote:
I work for an old-school 5250/RPG shop, and I'm looking for ways to broaden my horizons. I have basic Java skills, just finished a book on Node, and have "Hello World" level skills in a few other languages. Can anyone suggest good ways to improve? Right now, I feel like a hammer without a nail.
Thanks
Justin Taylor
midrange.com
