The past couple years I have been looking for ways to allow RPG shops to
thrive (not just survive). In conversation with Richard Milone
(CNXCorp.com, owner/author of Valence - a RPG+ExtJS solution) he mentioned
that they train existing web developers in other languages to learn Valence
vs. the potentially harder approach of training an RPG programmer in the
same tooling (I think it isn't as much about ability but instead willingness
to jump into the unknown)
I wonder if we should start page on the wiki.midrange.com site that details
how a PHP programmer could make the transition to RPG+CGI? There are some
"interesting" parts of RPG that they would have to watch out for (i.e. Open
Data Paths, Activation Groups) but I think in the end the environment could
be taught in less than a month. I am not saying they would understand how
to admin an IBM i, but at one month they could be fairly fluent in creating
RPG+CGI apps because they don't have the learning curve of
HTML+CSS+Javascript+CGI+browercomplexity.
Sounds like a book opportunity too - Kevin from Zend, are you listening? ;-)
Thoughts?
Aaron Bartell
http://mowyourlawn.com
http://mowyourlawn.com/blog/
midrange.com
