Nick Litten – AS400 iSeries and IBM i Consultant Nerd.
I’m an IT Consultant and IBM i Software Developer (aka RPG Programmer) primarily working on IBM Power Systems running the IBM i operating system. The current generation of IBM POWER SYSTEMS is latest iteration of the legacy machines from decades ago called System-i, iSeries, and AS400.
Thirty years ago (damn that makes me feel even older than I am) I fell into computer programming straight out of high school.. True story — I applied for a summer job driving forklift trucks because I thought that would be fun, but they decided I would be a good fit to work as a trainee programmer on their brand new System38 machine. I gratefully said “YES” purely because it paid more! But within a couple of weeks I was already feeling the nerdy excitement of this technology as I slowly got to grips with it.
Decades later, tapping on these IBM keyboards has taken me around the world; after spending the first third of my life in the United Kingdom, the next third travelling all over the USA, I’ve now settled in sunny Southern Spain. It’s a terrific ride. I believe us olderexperienced programmers have a responsibility to share the knowledge and help the *freshers* who are stepping foot in the IBM i pond for the first time.
English sounding RPG Hippie that looks exactly like me
Join the IBM i Community!
Update – July 2020
It’s time to upgrade this website to something more than just a blog. It’s time to give something back to the wonderful IBM i Community that I’ve enjoyed for so long. If you are new to the IBM i World, or training to be an RPG programmer or even working on a project that is interfacing with an IBM i System (earlier models included the AS400 and iSeries) then some of these video courses might help:
I started back in the days of IBM System/38 machines, the IBM PC XT was just being conceived, APPLE was working on its APPLE 2E, the internet was a futuristic dream and dialup Bulletin Boards were leading edge social media.
My home computer was an IBM PC XT with a modem the size of a shoe box that I plugged into my parents phone line, after disconnecting the bakelite rotary phone.
Working on IBM mainframe/midrange systems has taken me around the world, earning a good salary and, most importantly, doing something that I have really come to love: RPG is a fantastic language, IBM i is a terrific operating system and the hardware is second to none.
My blog is an attempt at sharing the IBM i Love, highlighting some programming techniques and sometimes just waffling about personal lifestyle nonsense.
Visual Studio Code (VS Code) is a popular source code editor developed by Microsoft that supports various programming languages, including IBM i (iSeries, AS/400) languages such as RPG, COBOL, and CL. With the help of extensions and plugins, VS Code can be transformed into a powerful tool for IBM i programming, providing features like syntax highlighting, code completion, debugging, and more.
This presentation is an introduction to the IBM i Power System and a look at the IBM Midrange System’s heritage from the 1970’s up to correct days. From the old pre-internet AS/400 systems, through the iSeries Generation to today’s modern Web2.0 IBM i Power Systems.
Welcome to the digital frontier of IBM i! In this course, we’ll bridge the gap between your trusty green screen and the modern web. Whether you’re a seasoned RPGLE coder or just dipping your toes into the world of APIs, you’ll learn how to expose IBM i programs as webservices, interact with RESTful endpoints, and unlock new possibilities for integration and automation. Say goodbye to siloed systems and hello to the internet of IBM i.
Which 5250 Screen Emulator shall I use? The IBM i System, like its predecessors the AS400 and iSeries, uses something called 5250 to stream its data to a terminal, often called a green screen. You’ve seen these clunky old terminals in black and white sci-fi movies. We still use them… sort of… we use terminal emulators (software that emulates the functions of those old terminals) to type commands into a command-line interface using windows/linux/mac whatever.
This course is an introduction into Using and Administering your IBM i System. We will go through signing up for a free account online and logging in and going through some basic usage of the wonderful IBM-i operating system.
The driving idea behind modernizing a legacy IBM AS400 or iSeries application is much more than the simple task of refactoring our old RPG and CLP codebase.
