IBM Systems Magazine, Power Systems - Fresh Faces - October 2017 - FF6
The IT professionals who championed IBM i during the roundtable are: * Stephanie Rabbani, independent consultant for Seiden Group * Kody Robinson, business and financial systems developer for Arkansas Electric Cooperative Corp. * Liam Allan, software developer for Profound Logic * Lynell Constantine, applications developer for Credentials Solutions MYTH 1 RPG PROGRAMMERS ARE ESSENTIAL, BUT HARD TO FIND FACT: Organizations can find qualified programmers by looking beyond "RPG" College graduates who already know a programming language can quickly pick up RPG, Robinson says. "Look for just programmers. Look for developers. If you have a modern environment, if you have Rational Developer for i or free-form RPG, it takes no time to come out, learning Java or C in school ... and hit the ground running." Constantine agrees, encouraging companies to cast a wider net for talent outside of a specific language. "A lot of younger people aren't getting into IBM i just because they literally don't know about it," he says. "Maybe a programmer who's going to school and primarily learning Java and C will see this and think, 'Maybe I should take a look at this' because as soon as they actually see what it is, if they have an understanding of programming, IBM GIVES US OPPORTUNITIES TO PROGRESS AND ADVANCE ON THE PLATFORM AND PROVIDES MORE MODERN SOLUTIONS FOR CLIENTS, AND IT'S ONLY GOING TO GET BETTER FROM HERE." -Kody Robinson, business and financial systems developer, Arkansas Electric Cooperative Corp. on resumes. Instead, hiring managers should look for skilled and passionate candidates first, then teach them RPG. Any programmer can learn RPG because, as Will points out, it's "just another language." they should be able to see how advanced it actually is." Allan, who taught himself RPG, also works extensively in open-source languages. Likewise, Rabbani didn't know IBM i or RPG when she graduated from college, but she now integrates IBM i with other platforms and works with web development. "We've been doing a lot of web applications on the i, integrating with lots of other systems," she says. "Take the reliability of the i, serve web applications from there, and then get data from other services and systems, and integrate the whole thing so people can have a full experience on the i." MYTH 2 IBM i HAS NO FUTURE FACT: The IBM i roadmap extends to 2027, and IBM is committed to both the platform and RPG. Not only is the company loyal to the technology, but so is a new generation of Fresh Faces who chose IBM i as their platform of choice for their career. Robinson expects IBM i and RPG to continue as mainstays and serve the evolving needs of businesses. "If you look at these big companies or small companies and everything in between, it's what runs their day-to-day core operations, so it's not going away any time soon," he says. "IBM gives us opportunities to progress and advance on the platform and provides more modern solutions for clients, and it's only going to get better from here." Other young developers are discovering that the IBM i platform coupled with other IBM solutions is designed to meet customers' future needs. "I love the fact that Db2* continues to improve on an already amazing database. I love learning about the temporal tables and the row and access column control," Rabbani says. "This is not necessarily the things that my clients are doing yet, but it 6 ibmsystemsmag.com Pg 1-11.indd 6 8/28/17 2:50 PM