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Code Modernization, Upgrading, Refactoring with an AI Coding Companion – Which to use? I have been playing with a little experiment this week and I thought I would share the results while they are still fresh. The star of the show is a classic little RPGLE subfile program I wrote years ago, it’s languished in …
Mapepire on My IBM i System: Finally Database Connections That Dont Make Me Want to Scream into the Void! Picture this: you are building a slick modern app and you just want it to chat nicely with Db2 for i without wrestling ancient ODBC drivers or wrestling with client libraries that feel older than your …
Perhaps the question is really “Is using AI to write code, or at least using AI as a coding assistant, the Future of IBM i Development?“ Well, I reckon AI is absolutely going to be a big part of the future for IBM i development, but it‘s not (yet) able to wave a magic wand …
“This week I’ve been mostly writing sub-procedures” If you have spent any time writing modern RPGLE on IBM i, you’ve seen small sub-procedures, bloated sub-procedures, simple, complex and plain crazy sub-procedures. Over the last week, I’ve been working hard to modernize a whole bunch of legacy RPG and SQL RPG code into cohesive, reusable sub-procedures …
If you have ever stared at a dusty fixed-format RPG III program from the 1990s and thought “there has to be a better way”, then IBM’s latest AI-powered sidekick might just be your new best friend. Meet IBM BOB (yes, that’s the official name now – Project Bob has grown up). BOB is IBM’s AI-first …
One of the most common headaches when you integrate your IBM i with the outside world is converting data between EBCDIC and ASCII. You get a flat file from a PC, pull JSON from a web service, or process input from another platform and suddenly your strings look like garbage. The good news is that …
Today we’re diving into something seriously exciting for anyone working with IBM i or AS/400 systems: IBM’s Project Bob, an AI-driven powerhouse with an incredible ability to analyze and document those ancient, mysterious RPG source codes. You know the ones. Dusty fixed-format RPG III programs from the 90s, packed with logic but completely lacking comments. …
Well folks, the future for IBM-i Programmers is here, and its name is Project Bob. I just had the pleasure of getting my hands on IBM’s latest AI tool designed specifically for us IBM i programmers, and I have to say – I’m very impressed! In a world where AI seems to be everywhere (and …
Ditching the Dinosaur Files: Why Your Modern RPG Source Code Deserves a Swanky IFS Pad Instead of Those Crusty Old AS/400 Source Files Ahoy, fellow IBM i adventurers! If you’ve been lurking in the shadowy realms of AS/400 development long enough, you know the drill: punching code into those venerable source physical files like QRPGSRC …
Every IBM i developer has opened a source member, stared at a sea of cryptic variable names, and muttered something unprintable. We have all inherited codebases where X1, CUSTFLG, and TMP123 roam free like wild animals. And while that might have been acceptable in the 1980s, modern RPGLE deserves modern readability. A clean naming convention …
If you’ve ever stared at a wall of fixed-format RPG code and thought, “This looks like it was written by a medieval monk with a ruler and quill,” then welcome to my world. I’ve spent far too many hours squinting at columns, indicators, and op codes that look like they were designed to test patience …
I’ve spent decades wrangling RPG code on AS400, iSERIES and IBM i systems. You know the drill: endless source files, green screens, and that nagging pull to modernize without breaking everything. Very repetetive and prone to broken code because of a finger slip, a mistyped line of code or a fat-finger moment on the keyboard. …
