Keep banging the rocks together guys

In a previous job (a Synon/Cool/Advantage/Allfusion/Whatever/2e shop) I had a conversation with our “technical” manager regarding my approach to developing an RPG application to send and receive Websphere MQ messages formatted in XML. Whatever/2e is rather good (if a little out of date) at some things but rather bad at others: interfacing with Webshere MQ and parsing XML fall into the rather bad category. The conversation went something like this…

Me: I’m going to use RPGIV and ILE for this one.
Boss: Erm… OK, as long as it adheres to the standards.
Me: Do we have any standards for RPGIV and ILE?
Boss: No. What do you want to do?
Me: Well, I’d like to use stuff like modules, service programs, procedures, long field names and mixed case (we were restricted to uppercase and 6 characters in RPGIII).
Boss: Not allowed to use long field names and mixed case.
Me: Why not?
Boss: Standards.
Me: What standards?
Boss: Well, uppercase is more readable! (fair point, most of her emails were in uppercase).
Me: WOT, LIKE IN BOOKS AND STUFF? (I walked away shaking my head muttering something about Luddites and did it my way).

This was just one of many similar conversations throughout my career.

I’m very fortunate right now to be working for an organization which embraces newer technology and both encourages and enables programmers to use the right tool for the right job.

So, if you’re work in an environment where your only tool is a hammer and all the problems are nails, I suggest that you have a look at Bob Cozzi’s article (written in mixed case funnily enough) “It’s time to get out of the stone age“. This particular hammer hits the nail firmly on the head and obeys the first rule of IT Management by fixing the blame – firmly with IT Management. Print it out and leave a copy on your manager’s desk – assuming that you have internet access of course.

It’s not often that you’ll hear me defending IT Management but I don’t believe that they are completely to blame. If they start using RPGIV, C, C++ or Java they are going to need to train their people who will then leave; or hire new people who already have these skills. I know far too many iSeries programmers who are only too happy to plod along, safe in their own comfort zones, unwilling or unable to invest in their own skills portfolio. Decent iSeries people are hard to come by, decent iSeries people with broad skill sets are like hen’s teeth.

What came first, the dinosaur or the egg?

Big brother

For a while now, Sam has been asking when he can have a little brother or sister. Yesterday Cathy and I were able to tell him – mid January. Cathy had her 12 week scan yesterday revealing a very wriggly little neveratosser with all the bits in the right place. Sam is delighted at the idea of being a big brother - I think that he will be the best big brother in the world, but I’m a little bit biased. The baby is due to arrive mid January which kind of spanners up the ski season (for Cathy, Sam and I are off to the slopes) but we’re all rather chuffed about the whole thing.

I’m off for a lie down now – I feel that I deserve it.