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Acronyms 101, 102, … and growing June 16, 2006

Posted by Rei Victor dela Cruz in : Java, Technology General, iSeries , comments closed

Way (way, way, way) back when I was in elementary school, we had to remember all these acronyms for our social studies class. Most of these acronyms had to do with United Nations (UN) organizations. These included UNESCO, WHO, and IMF. I couldn’t really appreciate all that remembering. I thought elementary (and then high school) were the last time I’d see acronyms.

But when I learned about computers, the terms CPU, RAM, ROM, and FDD were introduced to me. Of course there was also BASIC, COBOL, as well as EBCDIC, ASCII, and BCD.

As I entered college for my BS in Computer Science a lot more acronyms came along as computers now came with hard disk drives (HDDs) and CD-ROMs. Concepts on Operating Systems (OS), RDBMS, PROM, EPROM, OSI, TCP/IP, FTP, WWW, and VR gave my brain even more strain. With optical media nowadays there’s CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R, DVD-RW, and DVD-RW+.

Now that I’m an IT professional for nearly 10 years, the list just gets longer with SQL, HTML, DHTML, XML, PHP, ASP, to name a few. And if you’re not careful you and your colleague may be both talking about ASP but are referring to two totally different things: Application Service Providers or Active Server Pages. When I was a kid soap was just soap and Ajax was a brand of detergent. Now SOAP and AJAX are technologies used on the Internet.

With the abundance OSS (Open Source Software) there is an equivalent number of OSS Licenses. Take GPL, MPL, and LGPL. Of course there are the organizations that push OSS: FSF, OSI, and many others.

But it doesn’t really end there does it? With email, IM, and SMS (text messaging) now common means of communication, more and more acronyms get added to the list everyday. Can you keep up with CUL8R, BTW, IMHO, ROTFL, BCNU, or BRB?

Even love notes are embedded with acronyms. I won’t list them here lest I may accidentally divulge the cryptic codes I share with my wife. :D

Legal Computing June 1, 2006

Posted by Rei Victor dela Cruz in : iSeries , comments closed

Looking back three years ago, I never thought I would be able to it. Microsoft products were an essential part of my software requirements. But of course except for operating system which came with the PC, the MS Office installation was something that I wasn’t really proud of. The same goes for bootleg copies of Photoshop and other software. I had thought of purchasing legit copies but the cost of software would have caused me to declare bankrupcy.

I was already trying out different flavors of Linux even before. The only hindrance was those Linux versions apperently did not support my hardware. My first attempt was using Slackware. It won’t even boot up from the CD, so I junked that attempt. I then tried Mandrake 8.0 but eventually settled for Fedora when I got a new PC. Around that time, OpenOffice.org was becoming popular. With OO’s support for MS Office formats, which is the most important thing, I never looked back. To top it off I discovered GIMP, which is a lot like Photoshop, except that it was free.

Today, I’m using Linux at home most of the time. The only time I boot to Windows is when I need to visit websites that are use Microsoft controls. At the top of the list of such sites is one of the banks I do business with. Printing in color is another reason for me to boot to Windows as HP’s Linux support is still quite limited. But get this, I still use OpenOffice and GIMP even when I’m in Windows, so I can still say that all my software is legal.

On both platforms, the application software installed are a mix of freeware, free for personal use, and open-source.

The bottom line is you can stay legal. There are a lot of free and open-source software out there that you can use. Most of them are at par with their commercial counterparts.

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Microsoft, Microsoft Office, Windows are registered trademarks of Micosoft Corporation in the United States, in other countries, or both.

Adobe, Adobe Photoshop are registered trademarks of Adobe Corp. in the United States, in other countires, or both.

Other products are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

Upgrading Skills May 13, 2006

Posted by Rei Victor dela Cruz in : iSeries , comments closed

Many of my colleagues have asked me what they should learn in addition to their RPG/400 skills. I always tell them that they should take time to learn and practice ILE RPG particularly the new language features like /free.

But if they are looking for a challenge, I always say that they should look to Java. It’s difficult to ignore that Java is everywhere today. The Web, desktops, and even mobile devices. Not learning it is a disadvantage. I know that Microsoft .NET people will react to this but the thing is, Java is a cross-platform language. It works on Linux, Windows, iSeries, Solaris, etc. You just can’t say the same for .NET.

Of course, learning and getting to use it in a project are two different things. For my part I know a little of Java but haven’t had the chance to use it in a full-blown project just yet. I have talked to my bosses about this and hopefully we can work something out in the coming months.

Focusing on the midrange platform is great. No doubt about that. Developers belonging to the midrange community are the most sought after IT professionals in the world today. But adding Java to one’s arsenal can only mean greater things. Don’t you think?

Modernization Resistance May 1, 2006

Posted by Rei Victor dela Cruz in : iSeries , comments closed

I have been in the IT industry here in the Philippines for nearly 10 years now. Most, if not all, of my career was centered on the AS/400 (a.k.a. iSeries and now System i5). During those 10 years, I have seen the development of the iSeries particularly the ILE RPG language. Ever since I learned ILE RPG, I fell in love with it.

Having worked for a Filipino-owned IT service provider for almost 9 years and a now an American-owned subsidiary for almost a year, I still cannot understand why there are companies that have standarized their codes to RPG III and refuse to move to ILE RPG. You show them the advantages but somehow what you’re telling them goes into one ear and out the other just like that. I have to admit that there are companies that are doing it. But they’re doing it very slowly.

My wife is quite lucky as the clients that she’s usually assigned to are quite open to her using modern coding techniques. She has managed to use the /free in ILE RPG while I have not. At least I managed to use ILE RPG in a few projects in my career. I even managed to embed SQL in the programs.

Right now, I’m not even sure if just made a step back. With my current assignment, I’m using Synon (Cool/2E actually) for coding. Sure, the development is fast, but the code it generates is RPG III or RPG/400. I have looked at the generated RPG code and it’s not something that I myself will even think of coding as it contains GOTO’s, CABxx, etc., all of which are big no-no’s in modern ILE RPGÂ or even RPG/400 coding.

But there are cases of course, that programmers themselves refuse to use the modern coding styles even if they are allowed to do so. Either they are lazy or just want to make things difficult for the rest of us. I have conducted training sessions on ILE RPG and have always made suggestions on what opcodes to avoid and the concept of limiting the use of indicators to control program logic. In almost all of those lectures, you’ll find one or two training participants who refuse to listen to my inputs and instead use RPG/400 style code in an ILE RPG program. When asked why, they’ll smile and say that they’re already used to it. I wonder to myself what the point was in attending such a training if you don’t make use of what you’re learning. Oh, well…

So which do you think is worse? A client or company refusing change or the programmers refusing change?

iSeries Blunders Part III December 14, 2005

Posted by Rei Victor dela Cruz in : iSeries, iSeries Blunders , comments closed

There was this one time that I was at a client site doing some programming work. I noticed that one of the system operators was removing and then re-inserting a cartridge from the AS/400’s tape drive. He would walk back to the main console and type something. Shaking his head he would go through the entire process again.

After a few more minutes, I heard him mutter what sounded like a mixture of a curse and thank you.

I couldn’t take it anymore, so I asked him what happened.

Apparently, he was trying to initialize the tape in preparation for a backup. Whenever he typed the INZTAP command on the console, it would return an error that there was no tape in the drive. He removed and re-inserted the tape. He even tried using brand new tapes to no avail. Finally, he decided to signoff of the AS/400. Just before signing back-in, he noticed that he was connected to the remote AS/400 all that time.

He was very thankful that there was no tape on the remote (production environment) AS/400. If there’d been one — and it contained important data — he would have unknowingly erased it’s contents.

Lesson learned: If you work for a company that has multiple AS/400’s — whether local or remote — make sure that you are connected to the correct machine before doing anything.