Welcome to another edition of Talsco Weekly.

News: The New Code400, IoT, Digital Transformation and AI is spreading globally.
Development: Third-Party Payment software integration and the lost art of Software Documentation.
Leadership: IBM i Strategy and Roadmap along with insight about the growth of Power Systems.
Open Source: Python and SAP both have a place on the IBM i.
Trends: Humans will drive Business Transformation. And in the future, we will all be developers.

News

Code400 is the Support Alternative for RPG Developers

If you have been an RPG developer for more than 10 years my guess is you are familiar with Code400. It is “one of the few remaining open to the public IBM i specific forums on the internet”. Find out more about the new Code400 here.

IoT is the next digital transformation

“According to data from Forrester, last year 36 percent of enterprises were either implementing or expanding their IoT deployments. On top of that, 28 percent were planning on implementing IoT in the next 12 months. Combining those numbers together, 63 percent of enterprises are either doing IoT or at least planning on it.”

If you are a manufacturer relying on the IBM i as your business system, IoT lets you do some really interesting things. Originally, IoT was for connecting machines in the workplace but when you add an AI layer it can lead to real value to both internal and external customers. Think about the possibilities.

UN: China and the US are leading the way in AI race

“A report from the United Nations highlights a dominance by China and the United States in the race to artificial intelligence supremacy. The study, by the UN World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), was published on Thursday. US tech giant IBM is leading in AI patents with 8,920 filed. Microsoft followed with 5,930.”

Development

Stripe Payments Integration 101 for JavaScript Developers

With more and more of my customers talking about moving more of their customer transactions to the web, I thought it would make sense to touch on a popular payment platform, Stripe. It does not matter if you are not a Javascript developer (although it is a good language to pick up) or even if you will not use Stripe, because it covers the necessary steps involved in integrating a third-party payment platform. If nothing else, Javascript is a great language for RPG developers to learn.

A Guide to Writing Your First Software Documentation

As I work with clients across the United States, software documentation is always an important topic because often RPG consultants or new RPG Developers have to go in and work on legacy RPG systems with little or no documentation.

As a starting point, this is a good guide covering why software documentation is important, who it is for as well as what to include.

Leadership

IBM i Strategy and Roadmap

Do you know a Norm? Or, maybe a Norma? They save their companies a ton of money by upgrading existing systems with IBM i. Watch the video.

This is for anyone who is in the position of making a decision about the future of the IBM i platform within their organization.

Taking At Stab At Modeling The Power Systems Business

I think this article complements the article above about the IBM i roadmap because it highlights the recent growth of IBM Power Systems. As Timothy Prickett Morgan writes,

When you average it all out, from my model at least, it looks like the Power Systems hardware business – not including operating systems and integrated databases like the IBM i platform has bundled with it – grew by 8.8 percent in 2018 to just hair over $1.6 billion.

Open Source

Python on IBM I-series / AS400

One of the best-known Software Developer communities and Forums on the web is Stack Overflow.

It’s a go-to place for software developers to go to get answers to questions and connect with the open-source community of developers. The link above is to question on their forum about using Python on the IBM i. Someone in the IBM i community might want to venture over there to add some insight.

There are also IBM i topics relating to PHP, C#, Node.js, and virtually any open source programming language.

SAP: One of Open Source’s Best Kept Secrets

IBM i and SAP have a long business relationship. “Although many might not know this “SAP has supported their applications running on the IBM i operating system and the integrated Db2 for i database for over 20 years.”

SAP like IBM i, has been working with open source for a long time and it started when SAP R/3 was ported to Linux.

Trends

Human-Centered Transformation: A Step Ahead of Change

This article gives more evidence that the future of the enterprise will win or lose based on being able to deliver customer-centric applications that help drive Business Transformation. “Historically, technology adoption often has been a slow and painful process where users have had to be “trained,” depend on incomprehensible manuals.” But this is no longer the case. User’s today are far more in tune with software applications and how they work.

What Will Software Look Like Once Anyone Can Create It?

The Maker Generation is on the horizon. In the early days of development, software was built by hobbyists like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.

Then the big boys like SAP came in and built software the was to be managed by enterprise teams ranging in the hundreds or thousands of members. More recently we have seen SaaS take off along with the App driven economy.

The future will be different. We will build our own software. It will be based on building blocks and can be used to design your own software.

“What happens then? We’ll start designing apps for small audiences, not big. Companies will run on their own apps, hundreds of them, tailor-made for every team, project, and meeting.”

It will be interesting.

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