Re: RPG - I'm not dead yet! -- RPG400-L

but for me we are business problem solvers first

Don't we have business analysts for that?

Many times the problems we have to solve are more like "how can we put this
in our existing system without breaking it".

Don't get me wrong, business is always first, of course.

A good developer has both. He is technical (without that he wouldn't be a
developer), but can apply that knowledge to the business.
It is this combination of technical *and* business skills that is important.
Only one of the two is not enough.
If you're only technical, and don't think in terms of business processes and
how to support those effectively, is just as bad as knowing only business
and not thinking in technical terms.

But what is "technical", exactly.
It's not knowing all about 26+ languages, etc, thats the "tooling" part of
the story.

There is a body of generic knowledge about programming, which is the same
for all tooling/languages.
This is important knowlegde, needed to be able to effectively build
software, and not painting yourself in a corner within 3 years.
Making a program is simple. Anybody can do that.
The question is, how do i manage not 1 but 1000 programs, the next 5 years,
and do it effectively.
How do i manage that i can easily add another function, in 5 years.
How do i cope with constant change, with uncertainty, with customers who
only know what they want when they see it.
That is technical, not "business". Business is hiring a capable person who
knows this.
And you don't learn it from a book, just by experience, by reading about it,
and thinking about it.
And to do that, although you can get easy money without, you have to be a
little crazy.

Read books, there are many.
Like "the mythical man-month", the obligatory example.
Only some people on this list have read it, most RPG programmers never heard
of it, and are not interested.

Knowing that separating concerns within a software system is paramount to
cost-effectively evolving a system over the years is technical knowlegde,
not business. Business is hiring the right person.

In fact, you could say, every decision made at the IT dept. is a "technical"
decision.

On Wed, Jul 13, 2011 at 5:04 PM, James Horn <jdhorn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I agree, we do sort of have a mess - but

For me, from the beginning 37 years ago, business came first. With
whatever
tools exist, (for me those tools have almost always been a flavor of RPG),
you make sure you know what the customer wants, you get the job done
efficiently and you go on to the next task.

Much of my work for the last 31 years has been writing, maintaining and
enhancing 1 ERP system. The job consists of fact finding, preliminary
database/program design, agreement, code/test/implement, find the 5% we
missed, code/test/implement that, go on to the next project. Only about 5%
of that is thinking about the best possible technical implementation.

I think we all know that this concept needs to be expanded to handle the
daunting tasks of multiple user interfaces in the future, and in large
companies with many programmers we need some real tech heavies, but for me
we are business problem solvers first and programmers second.

Jim Horn

------------------------------

message: 5
date: Wed, 13 Jul 2011 13:08:35 +0000
from: "Schmidt, Mihael" <Mihael.Schmidt@xxxxxxxxxxx>
subject: RE: RPG - I'm not dead yet!

<quote>
Besides, if you are a programmer you are a TECHNICAL person first, business
second.
Yes, second.
Thats your job, computers, programming, yes?
Thats technical, first.
</quote>
IMO that is a fact that every programmer working on an IBM i platform
should
be able to agree on.

<quote>
We have enough business types making excel macros.
Then we have business types making RPG programs.
Thats why we have a big mess.
</quote>
That is the sad reality I have lived through the last couple of years.

My 2 cents

Mihael

--
Jim Horn
CATCO 651-697-6314 JDHorn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Cell 612-791-3924
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