This is one of my honest thoughts. In reality, in my work, it is all about delivering solutions that work, solve problems, and create more opportunities for more solutions going forward.

Just like in the humorous meme of Dave Chappelle that states “Modern problems require modern solutions”, my job is not to be beholden to a way of doing things or relying on how I did things last time. It is not about reaching into a tiny toolbox and using the same hammer to beat the problem out and try to quickly return to the business and say I fixed it.

The big 8,000 gorilla in the room in the IBMi world is modernization. One popular solution is to put an interface that converts 5250 into a web page. I have no problem with that because it solves the problem for the business and gives some breathing room to the developers to do the actual work of modernization.

The actual work is never seen or known until the continuous improvement, continuous deployment pipeline starts to deliver because the applications and data are now scalable. Development delivers forward sustainable solutions early and often.

This brings me to my point. Having worked as a developer on other platforms, the most notable thing I learned is how the thinking and working process is so much different. I am still trying to find the best description and words to express it, but there is a difference, and I work so much differently because of it.

At the center of this is scale. The IBMi is one of the most scalable platforms available. I have worked on Oracle and Microsoft-based platforms in development, and they get their wings by running on hyperconverged servers either on an internal cloud or actually in the cloud running in a serverless domain. These are just examples.

For every solution, developers working on applications or data are always thinking forward. Forward to best practices, better techniques, new technologies, methodologies to be more productive, and lessons learned from the past. Everything is scale, sustainability, refactoring, improving, delivering, and moving forward.

The secret for developing on the IBMi is to do the same and forget about the platform and develop for the future. The IBMi development sphere is on fire right now. IBM is stoking that fire. The number one thing we can do now is to honor the past but stop living in it. Read that previous paragraph again. That is the untold secret of modernization.

And to finish, I know many of you who are working in environments where management or some other power is stopping the use of modern tools and modern methods. Mark my words, another massive deplatforming bubble is coming. New management and capital equity firms want modern solutions. If we can’t or won’t deliver, there are more solutions than ever that can.

If you are pushing the limits of the IBMi, I salute you.