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Hello everyone --
I've been meaning to do this but it's fallen off my radar several times. Thanks to Jamie for "pinging" me. So... to answer the question: whatever happened to Chipper? He was a regular on the forum for many years and then vanished. Where did he go? In a nutshell, my time on the iSeries has not been as much as it had been previously. On the zSeries at the moment.
In May 2012 my position was eliminated because the company was transitioning from a home grown custom software package with one person in the IT department to a PC based off the shelf package. They got hit hard by the economy and closed 2 of their 5 branch offices (40% of their offices) as well as downsizing (what a nice euphemism) about 40% of their staff. It was more economical to have something off the shelf instead of paying a full time programmer.
I did some free lance programming briefly in the latter half of 2012. In April of 2013 I took a four month temp gig at a non-profit -- a trade union. That took me through to August 2013.
In Oct 2013 I was hired by the Federal Government and began working at the I.R.S. The first nine weeks consisted of an intensive training course in ALC (yes that stands for Assembler Language Code -- not American Lamb Council, Abington Lacrosse Club, and also does not stand for American Livestock Connection.) It was one of the most fun nine weeks of my life. Great camaraderie with the other students in the class, etc.
Currently working with somebody who will be retiring in a year. ALC has been fun to work with. In fact, it is only now after having been an RPG programmer for over 20 years that I actually understand how the MxxZO command works and exactly how the Z/D works in positions 26/33/40 of the old RPG II I-Specs. Always understood the C (character) but never did totally grasp if you put a Z or D there. Two out of three down. The only other one to conquer is the L0 indicator -- I know it's always on but never did come across a program which used it so I could say, "Oh. This is why you would want a Level Break Ind which is always on."
As fun as ALC has been, I miss my first love -- in all its flavors: II, III, IV, /free, etc. They're are hoping to modernize so there may be some Java , SQL or Oracle down the pike. However, for many years the sheer volume of work required a very low level language where you could:
1) Squeeze every morsel of space (using 8 bits and each means something different as opposed to 8 one byte Y/N fields)
-- and --
2) Squeeze and every morsel of speed (using Registers to do Math Instructions, etc).
Hence the use of ALC.
So... that's what I've been up to (besides being up to 209 a few weeks ago). A far cry from the svelte 133 back in college.
Hope everyone is doing well. Feel free to fill me in on what's been going on in your neck of the woods. Would love to hear from you!!
I've been meaning to do this but it's fallen off my radar several times. Thanks to Jamie for "pinging" me. So... to answer the question: whatever happened to Chipper? He was a regular on the forum for many years and then vanished. Where did he go? In a nutshell, my time on the iSeries has not been as much as it had been previously. On the zSeries at the moment.
In May 2012 my position was eliminated because the company was transitioning from a home grown custom software package with one person in the IT department to a PC based off the shelf package. They got hit hard by the economy and closed 2 of their 5 branch offices (40% of their offices) as well as downsizing (what a nice euphemism) about 40% of their staff. It was more economical to have something off the shelf instead of paying a full time programmer.
I did some free lance programming briefly in the latter half of 2012. In April of 2013 I took a four month temp gig at a non-profit -- a trade union. That took me through to August 2013.
In Oct 2013 I was hired by the Federal Government and began working at the I.R.S. The first nine weeks consisted of an intensive training course in ALC (yes that stands for Assembler Language Code -- not American Lamb Council, Abington Lacrosse Club, and also does not stand for American Livestock Connection.) It was one of the most fun nine weeks of my life. Great camaraderie with the other students in the class, etc.
Currently working with somebody who will be retiring in a year. ALC has been fun to work with. In fact, it is only now after having been an RPG programmer for over 20 years that I actually understand how the MxxZO command works and exactly how the Z/D works in positions 26/33/40 of the old RPG II I-Specs. Always understood the C (character) but never did totally grasp if you put a Z or D there. Two out of three down. The only other one to conquer is the L0 indicator -- I know it's always on but never did come across a program which used it so I could say, "Oh. This is why you would want a Level Break Ind which is always on."
As fun as ALC has been, I miss my first love -- in all its flavors: II, III, IV, /free, etc. They're are hoping to modernize so there may be some Java , SQL or Oracle down the pike. However, for many years the sheer volume of work required a very low level language where you could:
1) Squeeze every morsel of space (using 8 bits and each means something different as opposed to 8 one byte Y/N fields)
-- and --
2) Squeeze and every morsel of speed (using Registers to do Math Instructions, etc).
Hence the use of ALC.
So... that's what I've been up to (besides being up to 209 a few weeks ago). A far cry from the svelte 133 back in college.
Hope everyone is doing well. Feel free to fill me in on what's been going on in your neck of the woods. Would love to hear from you!!
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