Talsco Weekly: RPG Developers - Learn this Next!

Welcome to another edition of Talsco Weekly

IBM i Brief: 🔍 IBM i predictions highlight AI and modernization focus. 🎓 IBM launches global AI education initiative.
AI: ⬆️ AI's shift from scale to efficiency. 💻 IBM's Project BOB redefines enterprise AI coding.
Career: 🔌 MCP is what the RPG Developer should learn next.
Development: 💾 IBM i storage crisis solved by purging performance data. 📨 SEND_MESSAGE now supports any message queue.
Database: 🔗 Data pipelines meet IBM i realities.
Hiring: 👨‍💻 IBM i skills crisis overtakes cybersecurity concerns. ❓ Onboarding new AI hires.
Learning: 🎓A must-attend IBM i learning moment.

IBM i Brief

🔍 IBM i predictions highlight AI and modernization focus

Industry experts forecast 2026 as a transformational year for IBM i, with 70% of users planning hardware or software upgrades.

Clients today aren’t just modernizing their infrastructure and applications. They’re positioning themselves to take advantage of new capabilities as technology evolves. And the data backs it up: 70 percent of IBM i users plan to upgrade hardware or software this year, and 95 percent continue to see greater ROI on IBM i than on other platforms.

Key trends include AI-driven autonomous operations, API-first modernization strategies, and continued growth in cloud hosting for SMBs.

Modernization Is No Longer a Tool Decision – It’s a Governance Question: Successful IBM i modernization isn’t about the best UI framework or deployment tool. It’s about clear goals, architecture guidelines, ownership models, and cross-functional decision structures. In short: modernization becomes a leadership discipline.

While, challenges persist with RPG developer shortages and rising costs for smaller businesses.

As companies move into a No Hire–No Fire economy, AI investment is accelerating while IBM i and RPG teams face shrinking job postings despite powering a massive share of the U.S. economy. The future of IBM i depends on modernization through AI, hybrid skill sets, internships, and flexible contract talent, not traditional full-time hiring alone.

Let’s close with Dr. Emmett Brown from Back to the Future: "The future is what you make it."

🎓 IBM launches global AI education initiative

IBM opened an RFP for its Impact Accelerator program focused on AI-driven education and workforce development solutions. Selected nonprofits, government organizations, and academic institutions will receive two-year pro bono grants including watsonx, Granite AI models, and IBM Cloud access.

The gap between what people learn and what employers need is widening faster than institutions can adapt. As AI reshapes jobs and industries, workers are being forced to upskill at an accelerating pace.

The initiative addresses the growing skills gap as 57% of current employee skills may become obsolete by 2030, with education-to-work transitions costing the U.S. economy $1.1 trillion annually.

AI

⬆️ AI's shift from scale to efficiency In 2026, smaller, more efficient AI models are outperforming larger ones. DeepSeek's breakthrough demonstrated that algorithmic cleverness beats brute computational force. Researchers now focus on "thinking models" that deliberate before responding, mixture-of-experts architectures, and lightweight fine-tuning. Challenges remain: reliability, creativity, and hallucinations persist. Three constraints—economic, physical, and regulatory—will shape AI development. The consensus: frontier AI is maturing from raw scale to operational trade-offs and real-world limits. 💻 IBM's Project BOB redefines enterprise AI coding

Meet BOB the next Vibe Coder.

What is Vibe coding?

Vibe coding is describing what you want in plain language and letting the system generate the code, then guiding it by feel—adjusting, refining, and iterating until it matches your intent rather than writing every line yourself.

Project BOB is an AI-powered IDE built as a specialized fork of VS Code, designed for enterprise needs with agentic workflows, literate coding, and multi-model intelligence. It integrates deeply with watsonx Orchestrate, enabling developers to build complex AI agents in minutes.

Unlike competitors, BOB prioritizes security with shift-left scanning and governance, delivering a 45% productivity boost across 6,000 IBM developers while modernizing legacy systems like RPG.

Career

🔌 MCP is what the RPG Developer should learn next

MCP standardizes AI application connections

The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open-source standard that connects AI applications like Claude or ChatGPT to external systems, including data sources, tools, and workflows.

This is what the RPG Developer should learn and dive into next.

Similar to how USB-C standardizes device connections, MCP provides a unified way for AI to access information and perform tasks.

This reduces development complexity, enhances AI capabilities, and enables more personalized experiences like agents managing calendars or generating web apps from designs.

Learning how MCP works and how it can be applied to your work will give you back the excitement and curiosity that got you into coding in the first place.

Development

💾 IBM i storage crisis solved by purging performance data Here's an example where a developer faced a critical storage condition with ASP at 96% after neglecting Collection Services cleanup. 📨 SEND_MESSAGE now supports any message queue

IBM enhanced the SQL procedure in 7.6 TR1 and 7.5 TR7 with two new parameters: MESSAGE_QUEUE and MESSAGE_QUEUE_LIBRARY. Previously limited to the System operator queue, developers can now send messages to any queue, including non-user profile queues.

The procedure works with message IDs like CPF9898, accepts custom text, and results can be queried using MESSAGE_QUEUE_INFO. This expands messaging flexibility across IBM i applications.

Database

🔗 Data pipelines meet IBM i realities

Apache SeaTunnel is gaining attention as an open-source way to move data reliably between systems—without heavy custom code. For IBM i teams, the appeal isn’t replacing DB2 or RPG, but syncing DB2 for i data into analytics, cloud platforms, or BI tools with better visibility and control. The approach supports incremental updates and scheduling, offering a cleaner alternative to one-off extraction jobs while keeping IBM i as the system of record.

For IBM i developers, tools like SeaTunnel aren’t about replacing what works—they’re about extending it. If your DB2 data needs to travel farther than it used to, this may be worth a closer look.

Hiring

👨‍💻 IBM i skills crisis overtakes cybersecurity concerns

To no surprise (because we live in this space), after nine years at number one, cybersecurity dropped to second place in Fortra's 2026 IBM i Marketplace Survey, with skills shortage now the top concern at 69%.

The shift reflects mounting retirements among Baby Boomer-dominated IBM i professionals and difficulty finding replacements.

While IBM's Project Bob AI initiative and community training efforts aim to address the gap, it’s hard to replace the decades of knowledge that is looking to head to the beach vs the office.

That being said, there are a number of options in the market to train emerging talent.

imPOWER Technologies: Offers self-paced RPG, SQL, and modern development courses with instructor-led support. imPOWER Technologies
The 400 School: Provides live instructor-led training for IBM i operations, programming, and security since 1988. The 400 School
Manta Technologies: Features a library of 120+ web-based courses covering programming, administration, and operations. Manta Technologies
Open language adoption: Node.JS, PHP, and Python expand the developer pool for IBM i applications.

There is also the Hire, Train & Mentor program that we (Talsco) offers which is a combination of either hiring either internal or external talent, and then mentoring that individual with an IBM i expert of your choice. If you would like to know more about our offering. Schedule a call here.

❓ Onboarding new AI hires

This one has me scratching my head, but I guess we are here.

While once we talked about onboarding new developers, now we are talking about onboarding new AI hires.🤦

Here we go.

AI agents need institutional knowledge—company culture, processes, and app configurations—structured and accessible upfront. Context engineering addresses this by curating unstructured data, optimizing business processes, and leveraging metadata analysis.

Organizations must format contextual information for AI consumption, audit its quality, and document end-to-end workflows. A 3-step plan helps companies prepare content so AI agents deliver sophisticated outcomes without hallucinations or ambiguity.

Learning

🎓A must-attend IBM i learning moment This Midwest-based event stands out as one of the most important training opportunities for IBM i professionals looking to understand how AI and emerging technologies are being applied on the platform today. Beyond tools and buzzwords, it focuses on real education—helping developers, architects, and leaders build practical skills, modern context, and confidence as IBM i continues to evolve alongside AI-driven innovation.

Join

Contact us

If you are an RPG programmer looking to explore opportunities or a client who is looking for a talented IBM i professional, please contact us. We look forward to assisting you.

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