Re: Software Vendors (And US too) - A small rant

Andrew,

Good observation. On a recent blog entry, I wrote about discovering three
distinct groups in our community, but did not think that applied to this
particular conversation.

I would love to believe that "many of the professionals are now IT
professionals". When I present sessions at user groups, conferences and
seminars, I ask my audience if they think of themselves as "RPG
programmers" or "IT developers". The majority identify with the former. My
point in my "How to be an IT Survivor" session is that you need to become
an IT developer. Your words are perfect, however, I think we, as a
community, are only now beginning to understand the importance of this.
Your example is quite fabulous.



On 12/12/12 10:45 AM, "ALopez@xxxxxxxxxx" <ALopez@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

And then, there are those who simply put their hands over their ears and
say "nyeh nyeh not listening". It sometimes feels like we went from a
vibrant, strong, passionate community of AS/400 professionals to a
divided, marginalized, group of old out of date programmers and a small
passionate group of IBM i professionals. I want to be in the latter..

Hmmm. We could just as easily say:

"...a divided, marginalized, group of old out of date programmers and an
insignificant assortment of IBM groupies".

My point being that you seem to set up two categories. The first is old
and marginalized, the second is [apparently] even smaller. If that's the
case you're pretty much saying they're one step past marginalized, but
fervent and 'professional'.

I have very little dog in this fight. I use SQL for 90% of what I do,
which pretty much goes everywhere. I support JD Edwards, which pretty
much runs on anything. I use Windows at work, Linux at home. I also see
that IBM has made a complete hash of this product line. We're debating
like this about the name of the system. Multiply that by the number of
abortive attempts to update the interface, the re-branding of its web
servers, the continual migration of its preferred, modern programming
interface, the meandering path of APIs, fat clients and web interfaces
used for administration.

I think you'll find that many of the professionals are now IT
professionals. Agnosticism when it comes to operating systems/hardware
is
pretty common and the most viable approach for the future.


Andrew&nbsp;&nbsp;Lopez
Systems Analyst