Re: Long time RPGer needs help getting started in newmethods

From: Thomas

Blair:

I share your frustration with trying to figure out what to do next.

If you look at my website "on an iSeries" I can show you where the
handouts from the Northeastern iSeries users groups training conference
are.

I am working on doing some Dot Net C# front end work right now per
training. Will be willing to talk to you off line about this.

What I believe we need to do as a group is put together some true
ABCDEFGHIGH steps of how to exactly do everything.

Not all of us are as smart as the people who post on this  site. And there
are some really smart folks out there. But if we want to save the iSeries
platform all of us have to be able to show the companies we might work or
contract for --- why the iSeries is better than more PC's.

(...SNIP...)

So Blair if you want to talk off line I am open. Otherwise I would be
willing to be the coordinator to us putting together usable examples of
web frontend products for the iSeries.

Okay, this is an interesting issue.  Let me pump out a couple of points, and
ask some questions.

First, there are a ton of new technologies available.  Everything from JSP
and servlets to VB.NET to PHP to Python.  Thick client, thin client, rich
client, no client.  You name it, there's an architecture.  There are
buzzwords and hype aplenty, including things like SOA and Web Services and
ESB.

At the same time, nobody has a lot of time to learn new stuff.  I don't know
how you learned RPG; I learned it by reading manuals late at night while
pulling reports off the back of a 1403 line printer.  Every language I
learned was learned the same way: on my own, reading books, looking at other
people's code, and trying the stuff myself.  I know very few people who were
"classically trained" in RPG.  That's part of the beauty of our community, I
think: we're business programmers who use the language as a tool to solve
problems, not technologists looking for a problem to solve.  The vast
religious wars out there about languages and syntax and so on are primarily
between technologists, not business programmers.

Okay, then... if you're a business programmer, what do you want?  You want
two things, I think.  One is just what you mentioned above, a way to show
decision makers why they should use the iSeries.  That's IBM's job,
actually, but since it's clear they have no interest in doing so then it's
up to us.  And that, I think, is the stated goal of places like iSociety: to
raise the awareness of the platform in general.  But then more specifically,
you need to be able to show YOUR clients or employers what the iSeries can
do for them.

And that's where learning new technologies comes into play.  I'm not going
to spend ANY time in this particular email comparing or contrasting the
various approaches.  I have very specific biases based on my experience over
the years, but that's not the point.  The point is that we as a community
need a place to be able to get started.

Let's take a hypothetical website.  This website would have examples of
software that would demonstrate the uses of various architectures and
technologies.  The software would have to be freely available so that you
could download it, and at the same time would need all the instructions to
install it in a pretty much idiot-proof fashion.  You would basically
download an installer, and you would have all the software (including the
source code) to run some piece of technology.

You mentioned an ABCDEFGH approach.  I would argue that perhaps an A-B-C
approach with a little more depth is necessary; I have a little problem with
giving somebody a complete black box technology that they don't understand
and then having that go into production.  Instead, I'm much more inclined to
teach people enough so that they are past the initial learning curve and can
then begin to learn on their own.

But even a simple A-B-C site is going to take work.  First, someone has to
research the technologies involved.  Then they have to get them to work.
Then they have to identify the various pitfalls.  Then they have to create a
self-installing package, or conversely write a detailed, step-by-step
document for installing the software.  And then, inevitably, they'll have to
put up with the people that can't install or run the stuff no matter how
easy it is.

That's an awful lot of work to ask someone to do for free.  Most of us in
the real world of midrange business programming have day jobs and adult
responsibilities.  Few of us can afford to simply sit down and write free
software (much less support it).

But, if there was a real need for such a site, and people were willing to
contribute, I suppose it could happen.  But that site would have to be
severely monitored to keep out the trolls, and to stay focused on the
specifics of the job at hand.  It would have to be very careful to avoid
ties to specific vendors or products and would have to be very mindful of
technologies that weaken rather than strengthen the iSeries (and who is the
arbiter of that particular decision?).

It's a good idea, but I don't know how it could be done easily.  I've tried
a couple of times over the years, and there are a LOT more people who want
to download a quick fix for their company than people who are willing to
write free software for others to use or even take the time to document what
worked for them.

Joe