Hey folks, this Sunday morning finds me tinkering with some old training videos, while wading knee-deep in green screens, RPG code, and the occasional cup of strong coffee on the sunny (but cold) Spanish Costa Blanca.

I’ve just hit publish on something that’s been sitting on my hard drive for way too long: a brand-new (well, newly released) course called Simple RPG Subfiles for Beginners over on nicklitten.com.

But here’s the fun part, the videos themselves? They’re from about 7 years ago when I lived in Vegas. Yep, I dug them out of the archives, gave them a quick polish (new intros, a bit of cleanup, some fresh thumbnails), and decided it was finally time to let them loose on the world properly.

Why now? Why dust off old footage?

Because subfiles haven’t changed.

The fundamentals of how RPG subfiles work on IBM i – the SFL, SFLCTL, SFLDSP, load-all vs. page-at-a-time, READC loops, indicators behaving badly – are exactly the same today as they were back then. Companies are still running (and maintaining) these green-screen apps every single day. New folks are still joining teams and staring at legacy column-based RPG wondering “what the heck is this SFLNXTCHG doing?”

If you’re one of those people (or mentoring one), these lessons will save you hours of head-scratching.

What’s actually in the course?

It starts super simple:

• Legacy column-based RPG (the old fixed-format stuff you still see in the wild)
• Building a basic subfile from scratch – DSPF + RPG program
• Loading data from a file, handling paging, clearing the subfile properly
• Debugging the classic “why isn’t my subfile showing anything?” moments
• Reviewing code – is it good? Is it bad? (Spoiler: I had to edit out quite a few accidental swears)
• Testing, mainline logic walkthroughs, even a cheeky “compile this right now!” vibe

There are dedicated videos on compile/run cycles, spotting dodgy subfile code, and cleaning it up to modern free-format standards. It’s hands-on, no-fluff, exactly how I like to teach.

Playlist link if you want to peek on YouTube first:

But the full structured course (with resources, code downloads, progress tracking) is over here

Yes, it’s free – but maybe consider subscribing, or buying me a coffee, keeps the lights on and lets me keep making more of this stuff.

A quick word to my fellow IBM i warriors

If you learned subfiles the hard way back in the day, watching these might bring back memories (and maybe a few “oh yeah, that’s why we did it like that” moments). If you’re newer to the platform, this is probably the gentlest on-ramp you’ll find without paying silly money for formal training.

Either way, I’m proud to finally get this out there. Seven years in the making (sort of), zero minutes wasted.

Grab a brew, fire up your partition (or your ACS session), and let’s build some subfiles.

Happy coding – may your SFLCLR always work on the first try.

Cheers,