Re: Looking for opinions on education

On 2/17/2017 10:21 AM, Richard Reeve wrote:

I don't have a
specific need or application in mind. Rather I'm trying to 'catch up' to
current day technology.

Read programming books. I still like McConnell's Code Complete despite
its age. Current day technology is the web. Search out tutorials on
web stuff like the Google Maps API. Use it to plot out (for example)
customer addresses on a city map. You'll be learning about JDBC,
Javascript, Google Maps, JSON, AJAX and many more acronyms, but you will
be learning them as a means to an end, not as an end in themselves.

'Why' is more powerful than 'how'.

I've still got another 20 years in me and can't
see straight RPG/COBOL/SQL as being good enough any more.

I'm standing squarely in those shoes. In my opinion, RPG has never been
more alive than today. I can write callbacks, integrate MI, C, and Java
seamlessly. I can embed SQL solely to use SQL scalar functions - no
database I/O needed! The restrictions on name length, array size,
string size - all well beyond what I need. I can extend SQL with
functions and procedures written in RPG. I can (and do) consume result
sets in RPG

RPG is vibrant, and even though I only do back end work, it is
marvellous for virtually all of my needs. What few things I need to do
in C or MI, I wrapper in a service program so that my RPG colleagues and
I can easily consume that service.

If you haven't got access to a 7.3 machine, I strongly urge you to rent
some time on one. Mock up a few of your current major production tables
and write some RPG functions to get work done. Add triggers, RCAC,
error traps - all the things we wanted in the 80s -- we have them right now!

One of the best things I ever did for myself was to switch to RDi some
20 years ago. A better editor enables better thinking on my part. The
current RDi, 9.5.1.1, has the first round of RPG refactoring. Not only
is RPG vibrant, but so is the editor. Along with RDi, there is an open
source add-on called iSphere, which is actively being expanded. Another
add-on called RPGUnit is a unit test framework similar to JUnit, but you
know, for RPG :-) I find that these in combination have made me a much
better programmer, even at home, where I work on Arduinos and the like.

It's a great time to be a part of the RPG ecosystem!