The New Crop of RPG Developers

What Are New RPG Developers saying?

It's hard to argue that IBM i (AS/400) shops are starting to see the affects of retiring RPG Developers. Keep in mind that a retiring workforce is not isolated to the RPG Developer community. There are countless verticals, industry domains, and technology stacks that face the same problem. Take a look at any of the emerging technologies areas and there are not enough people available. The shortage might be for different reasons, but still a shortage exists. What does this mean for the new crop of RPG Developers? Unbelievable opportunity. Regardless, where you are at in your career as a RPG Developer if you plan on sticking around for the next ten years, having knowledge of the old and the new is one of the smartest career moves you can make.

The opportunity for those who understand the unbelievable power, versatility, security and efficiency of the IBM i when combined with open source solutions will not have to worry about finding opportunities because the opportunities will find them.

Career opportunities for new RPG Developers. Check out this months issue of IBM Systems Magazine. Take notice of some of the new faces in the IBM i community and type of work they are doing as well as the mix of skills and technologies they are using. Everything from Db2, RPG, Cloud, Google API's, web services, Java, XML and more. Their enthusiasm for the IBM i is contagious.

Welcome to another edition of Talsco Weekly.

News: The most powerful supercomputer uses IBM POWER9. IBM i has a new Security Architect.
AI: AutoAI for Watson. Industry 4.0 as a result of AI and IoT.
Development: Dead programming languages.
Hiring: What makes up great remote teams. Miserable employees.
Leadership: How to develop a growth-leadership mindset. It's simple! Focus on customer experience.
Modernization: Gartner report about Legacy Systems.
Open Source: The release of the first PHP 7.4.0.
Security: What you need to know about Edge Computing.

News

IBM develops world’s most powerful commercial supercomputer for Total "IBM has built Pangea III, the world’s most powerful commercial supercomputer for Total, the global energy company operating in more than 130 countries". By the way it's a "IBM POWER9-based supercomputer." Meet IBM’s New Security Architect for IBM i This article from IT Jungle is more than about who is the new Security Architect is for IBM i and more about how important security is today in the enterprise. "Security isn’t just a feature of the IBM i operating system. It’s a fundamental concept that all IBM engineers share as they go about their business building and maintaining the system that’s used by over 120,000 organizations around the world."

AI

IBM debuts AutoAI in Watson Studio "AI is fast moving beyond solving only specific tasks and dependence on manually-crafted features such as laborious feature-engineering steps. Now, AI learning is adaptive, using automatically-constructed features and neural network architectures that can optimize the model for your use case, delivering time-to-value and unprecedented value for enterprises. AI for AI is here. " The fourth Industrial revolution emerges from AI and the Internet of Things "Big data, analytics, and machine learning are starting to feel like anonymous business words, but they're not just overused abstract concepts—those buzzwords represent huge changes in much of the technology we deal with in our daily lives. "

Development

New subfields added to Program Status Data Structure "The latest Technology Refresh for IBM i 7.3, TR6, has seen two new subfields added to RPG's Program Data Structure." What's your favorite "dead" language? "Do you believe in dead languages? Can a language truly be dead if it still compiles and executes? Maybe there are no dead languages — only dead compilers." From look looks of this article, RPG is not dead because it's not on the list.

Hiring

Google Spent 2 Years Researching What Makes a Great Remote Team. It Came Up With These 3 Things Google knows a thing or two about building remote teams. "The company has nearly 100,000 workers spread over 150 cities. In more than 50 countries. On five continents." It is a fantastic summary of the most important things you need to do when building remote team. The Mystery of the Miserable Employees: How to Win in the Winner-Take-All Economy Is your business doing well but your employees are miserable? Here is a great artcile about how data offers clues to employee engagement and overall happiness. It sheds some insight as to what might be going on at your company.

Leadership

The importance of a growth-leadership mindset in capturing growth "Business leaders need three capabilities to drive growth: mind-set, curiosity, and a willingness to adapt to the client and the market." Does your leadership team have the growth-leadership mindset? How Fortune 500 Company CDW Fuels Steady Growth by Focusing on Customers "As the business world goes increasingly digital and customer expectations rise, companies face the ongoing challenge of evolving their businesses to organize around customer value. Increasingly, success hinges on Customer Experience Management (CXM), with a deep understanding of customer needs and the ability to mobilize and deliver quickly."

Modernization

Gartner Reprint About Leagacy Systems and Modernization This is really important for IBM i leaders to pay attention to. It speaks to the exciting future ahead. "Legacy platforms may seem old, outdated and due for replacement. Yet IBM and other vendors are continually integrating open-source tools to appeal to more developers while updating the hardware. Application leaders should reassess the capabilities and quality of these platforms before leaving them."

Open Source

PHP 7.4.0 alpha 1 Released "PHP team is glad to announce the release of the first PHP 7.4.0 version, PHP 7.4.0 Alpha 1. This starts the PHP 7.4 release cycle, the rough outline of which is specified in the PHP Wiki."

Security

The role of edge computing security in enterprise networks This article is important because security has changed so much as it relates to the IBM i ecosystem. It's important to understand what Edge Computing is and the role it will play in the future. IT teams need to "pay attention to the multiple logical -- or physical -- networks devices use to communicate, and the multiple layers of management and analytics in which the devices are often enmeshed".

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