Talsco Weekly: Where do RPG Developers Hang Out?

Welcome to another edition of Talsco Weekly

IBM i Brief: 💼 SAP’s RISE program could boost IBM’s cloud offerings. 🔍IBM targets tech innovation.
Development: Where do RPG Developers Hang Out?
Modernization: 🏛️Government battles legacy systems in modernization push.
Security + AI: 🔨 Security expert creates first LLM threat modeling benchmark. ➕ AI security expert tests LLM vulnerability detection.
Trends: ✨AI and tech to drive unprecedented progress by 2050.

IBM i Brief

💼 SAP’s RISE program could boost IBM’s cloud offerings

SAP’s latest transformation program, RISE with SAP, bundles applications, cloud infrastructure, and integration services into a single contract. IBM’s Power Virtual Server cloud platform is positioned to benefit significantly, leveraging its existing 10,000+ SAP customers. The company demonstrated success by migrating its own operations, achieving 30% infrastructure cost reduction and completing a massive 150,000-user deployment across 175 countries.

Get a quick history of how SAP originated and it’s ties to IBM.

🔍IBM targets tech innovation IBM, a U.S. tech giant, focuses on automation, hybrid cloud, AI, quantum computing, and enterprise IT. Its stock offers steady dividends but faces competition from Microsoft, Amazon, and Google. This analysis explores IBM’s price forecasts, technical and fundamental factors, and market sentiment to assess its long-term investment potential and growth challenges.

Development

Where do RPG Developers Hang Out?

The IBM i is a COMMUNITY.

As I speak with seasoned veterans and newcomers to the IBM i space, they often ask a similar question, "Where can I go to learn more about RPG, open-source development, AI, etc..?"

Here is a list of a number of ways RPG Developers can learn from fellow IBM i-ers.

Seiden Group: Offers Code for IBM i Fridays which is regular community gatherings for VS Code for i users who want to ask questions, share tips, and discuss open issues and potential improvements to the IDE.
imPower Technologies: For the over 400 RPG developer graduates from imPower Technologies, they have access to an every Wednesday information and Q&A session
YouTube: There is no shortage of IBM i tutorials on YouTube.
GitHub: is a platform for version control and collaborative coding. IBM i pros find open-source tools, scripts, and projects to enhance development and system management. Here are some links to get you started: IBM i Open Source Resources, RPG Generative AI Training Data, IBM i RPG Free-Form and CLP Code Examples, IBM RPG Learning Notes and Examples, RPG Coding Examples
Hugging Face: is a platform for machine learning, offering open-source tools, pre-trained models, datasets, and applications, primarily focused on natural language processing and AI development.
COMMON: is a professional association for IBM technology users, providing education, networking, and advocacy for Power Systems and related IT solutions in North America, and now in India and Latin America.
Blogs: There are no shortage of blogs in the IBM i community. Here are several valuable resources. RPGPGM.com, IBM i Reference Pages, I Think Therefore IBM i. 😉 A more complete list can be found over at All400s.
IBM Power Skills Academy: offers educational resources, training, and certifications for IBM Power Systems, aimed at students, educators, and professionals to enhance skills in enterprise computing.
IBM i Security: Kisco U offers a free online repository of IBM i security articles. Compiled from decades of expertise, it covers topics like audit journal data marts, intrusion detection (IDS) configuration, and security enhancements in IBM i 7.5 TR 5 and 7.4 TR11. It’s designed to help users secure IBM i systems effectively.

Modernization

🏛️Government battles legacy systems in modernization push

This is a GREAT article, as it covers a lot of territory and hits home as how and why to best approach modernization.

Summary: As DOGE’s Elon Musk confronts federal bureaucracy, aging mainframes and COBOL systems present a significant modernization challenge. While Musk aims to streamline government operations, experts suggest a cautious, incremental approach to updating legacy systems rather than rushing toward bleeding-edge technology.

As the divide between current systems and modern solutions grows steeper, gradual transformation is essential.

Here are the key takeaways from the article:

Modernization doesn’t require going “all in” on the latest technology - incremental approaches can be more effective than complete overhauls
While cloud and AI capabilities have improved dramatically, implementation challenges have grown more complex, especially for organizations using legacy systems
The technology gap between legacy and modern systems creates steeper transition risks, making gradual transformation the safer approach
Vendors may push for complete system overhauls, but organizations should focus on what actually meets their specific needs rather than adopting every new technology

Security + AI

🔨 Security expert creates first LLM threat modeling benchmark

As the IBM i looks to embrace AI and various LLM’s, AI+Security is becoming it’s own specialty. Here is a helpful resource.

Matt Adams developed TM-Bench, the world’s first benchmark for evaluating LLM capabilities in security threat modeling. The project emerged from his work on STRIDE GPT, focusing specifically on models that can run on consumer-grade hardware. TM-Bench aims to help security teams make informed decisions about LLM deployment while maintaining high security standards and operational efficiency.

➕ AI security expert tests LLM vulnerability detection A security researcher documents experiments with using modern LLM reasoning models to detect code vulnerabilities. Unlike previous approaches that required external tools, this test focuses purely on LLM reasoning capabilities. The researcher enhanced their open-source project ai-security-analyzer with a specialized prompt for discovering vulnerabilities in source code. Interested in learning more about AI+Security?

Trends

✨AI and tech to drive unprecedented progress by 2050

Here is a analysis that outlines how AI, renewable energy, and bioengineering breakthroughs are converging to enable extraordinary advances.

The next 25 years could mirror the post-WWII boom, as these transformative technologies reach maturity and scale. Leyden argues this represents a historic opportunity to reinvent systems and build a better world.

🔐 At the WMCPA Conference this past week, AI + Security were the two hot topics of discussion and how it relates to the IBM i.

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.

Do you know of someone who could benefit from Talsco Weekly? If so, please use the social media buttons to spread the word. Thank you!