[WEB400] Training RPG programmers for the web

[Buck Calabro <Buck.Calabro@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The discussion about books, teaching and specific code examples struck a
chord with me...

>Jon has a point that your books should
>show the latest and greatest method, with notes
>about how to do it in older releases.

I have very similar problems here in my company.  How do I train somebody
how to maintain my CGI programs?  There are prerequisites that need to be in
place first, right?  I can't simply tell people to 'use the includes from
CGIDEV2 and bind to service program CGIDEV2 in QGPL' and let them loose.
They need to understand at least something about /COPY, activation groups,
service programs, procedure prototypes and so on.  If the prototypes use
VARYING then they need to know about VARYING, %LEN and the two byte binary
length prefix for those inevitable corruption issues.

The problem is that no such list of prerequisites exists that I know of.

So.  I need to construct that list.  In my case, I need to teach VARYING and
pointers, but for a very generic introduction to CGI, I'm not sure I would
make the same decision.  I would much rather have a separate course on using
VARYING and be able to say 'you need to take THIS before you can take THAT.'
So while I personally would opt to explain VARYING, I am not so sure I would
make the same decision if I were writing a book; there's only so much space.
That's in addition to the number of back-level shops who wouldn't use the
code anyway.  The book would sell better in three years than it would today!

It's frustrating to try to find the middle ground that is advanced enough to
entice but not so advanced as to frighten.
  --buck