Welcome to your IBM i update for July 2024.
This month, i have a brief report from the i-Power event in Northampton.
In addition, following his successful workshop during the conference, I caught up with Andy Youens to discuss Python, with a bit of PHP and Node.JS too.
You can watch the video below or read the full article underneath.
Watch the Video:
i-Power Conference – Northampton 2024
Now, in July, we enjoyed the biggest IBM i conference in the UK calendar, i-Power.
This multi-steamed event included topics as diverse as Security, Database technology, Traditional and Modern Development and System Administration…
We kicked off the event with an update from the committee, re-establishing their commitment to educating the next generation of IBM i-ers their i-UG accreditation partnership with Wolverhampton University.
Indeed, i-UGs Chairman, Mike Ryan bought on recent graduates from the program to the the stage to rapturous applause from the audience – well done to them.
Douglas Gibbs Introduced as Alison Butterill’s Replacement
The entertaining and educational keynote speech was provided by Douglas Gibbs.
Now you may remember that last year, long term IBM i stalwart, Alison Butterill retired.
Doug is her replacement and during his opening, admitted he has big shoes to fill.
Doug went on to provide some humorous insight into who he is and what the community can expect from him… of which, consisted of him being a Canadian and all the achievements there-in.
Now, when I think of Canada greats, I think of Rush, Poutine, ice hockey and the Niagara Falls.
Doug however gave a different slant, slating that one of the finest things created in Canada is in fact… the Hawaiian Pizza!
Apparently, it was invented in Ontario and to this day remans the top choice pizza in the region – who knew!?!
His presentation was a vehicle for us to get to know him… which was appropriate and appreciated by the community present.
And, in addition to providing some background on himself, Doug provided a summary on where we’ve come from and how far we’ve come too culminating on the massive growth in technology in the past 20 years before passing over to Scott Forsie who detailed the innovations in AI…
I covered this presentation in the May 2024 and June 2024 IBM i Updates – so please see those blogs for more details on this.
I’ve covered the event before, and while you can get the presentations and technical details elsewhere, I thought I’d provide a little more insight into the feel for the event.
First, the food was top class – a pause on my diet plan was more than justified.
For those who stayed over – the gala dinner was excellent too with (again) not only great food but also engine conversation, excellent presentations and games too… of which my table lost by a just a hair’s breadth.
Python Workshop Review with Andy Youens
Now, you may remember that I covered the i-UG event in London in the march/April edition of the update.
During that event, Andy Youens presented his top three modern programming languages for IBM i and asked the audience to vote for the language in which they’d like a free workshop on at i-Power.
Well, the votes were counted and during the event, Andy deep dived into the world of Python and provided a days introduction on how to program in popular language.
I caught up with Andy following the event to ask him how the workshop went.
Andy Nicholson: Andy, welcome to the IBM i update.
Andy Youens: Hello there. Thanks for having me.
Andy Nicholson: I’d like to start with your choice for the top three development languages on IBM i. Would you be so kind as to just give us the briefest outline on why you chose these three and what they are.
Andy Youens: Right. Certainly PHP was number one then Node.JS. And good old python.
Andy Youens: Why PHP, well, It’s been available on the IBM i now over 20 years. So, very very popular. 75% of the world’s websites run PHP. With Node.JS? I found was a bit of a heavyweight. It really took some learning from me. Nothing against Node.JS, but it’s got its own unique way of doing things. But Python? Very popular with the colleges. It’s been available now on the IBM i for a while, about eight years or so… It’s an easy for RPG programmers. My grandkids love Python so, it fits everybody really and it’s not got a great learning curve to it.
Andy Nicholson: During your talk on the top three modern languages in London in March you asked for Community to choose one for your Workshop in August. They voted in the droves and chose python. Why this is?
Andy Youens: And thankfully, they didn’t pick Java >laughs<. I put those three on the table because they were the ones I’d be quite happy giving a workshop on, whereas Java, I’m not an expert. But, I was quite happy with PHP, Node.JS and Python and wasn’t surprised it was Python really and as I said, it’s easy to pick up and it’s a current buzzword.
Andy Nicholson: What do you think makes Python a good fit for development on IBM i?
Andy Youens: It can be very very simple or it can get very very complicated. It’s got a big bandwidth, whatever you want to do with it. It can do the same as say a CL program but can also do the same as an RPG program; they’ve both got their places.
Andy Nicholson: With this in mind how, putting the workshop together must have taken some preparation. How did the audience take to the session?
Andy Youens: Yeah, I must admit an all day workshop takes a bit of doing to be honest, because you don’t know what the audience is be. Are they going to be all RPG programmers or are admin or sales people even going to attend? So, yes. It’s very difficult really to be honest, but I’ve since received feedbacks and it’s been excellent and well worth doing.
Andy Nicholson: What do you think are the main benefits of using modern languages such as Python and PHP against perhaps more traditional languages of RPG and Cobol.
Andy Youens: It’s all using the right tool for the job to be honest.
Andy Nicholson: And how do you think that businesses can leverage open source Python or PHP to help modernize their business.
Andy Youens: RPG has been great. I mean often use it for 40 years. So it can’t be that bad. Some things in RPG are very easy, but there’s some other things that are very difficult and Python does things, like sending an email using a web service. Yeah. I know we can do this in RPG, but it’s a lot easier in Python. So, it really is picking the right one for the right job. If that’s open source. So be it.
Andy Nicholson: What do you think is the learning curve for someone in RPG learning PHP, Node.JS or Python?
Andy Youens: So, we’ve got companies that have been using RPG right back to the system 36 so we can’t just go in there and replace all that and right rewrite it in Python. keep your RPG. It’s great at doing the back end stuff, but for the front end use Python use the tools, For the job. That’s what it’s all about.
Andy Nicholson: On a different note, you are also the editor and Lead writer for the very terrific power wire blog. Could you please provide our audience with some details on how to find it and if they’re not already subscribed, how they could go about this?
Andy Youens: Power Wire has been around a hell of a long time now. It goes right back to the beginning of the IBM i. We normally get two or three articles a month for the people out in the field – the real users. It’s a Blog with great articles on there. We’ve just had our six hundred article written this month so bit of a milestone but there’s a real wealth of material for people to discover. We provide a newsletter that’s delivered once a month. You can sign up for that AND read the blog at https://powerwire.eu/. We won’t spam you and we haven’t sold the list on (and we won’t), so it’s just one email a month. That’s all you’re going to get from us. But, it’s been fun. we were told that it was gonna shut down at the end of last year, so we took it on board and it’s been fun!
Andy Nicholson: Congratulations on your 600th post there terrific achievement and thank you again for joining the IBM I update.
Andy Youens: No problem, keep in touch!
And my thanks to Andy for joining me.
That’s it for this months update.
Should you wish to view any of the articles featured in full, please check out our IBM i blog here.
Until next time,
Andy
Catch our previous June IBM i Update here. Alternatively, if you’d like to receive the latest IBM i Update hot off the press to your inbox, subscribe to the newsletter version on LinkedIn here.
Posted by Rob on 2nd August 2024.