Tech.blog

Way (way, way, way) back when I was in elementary school, we had to remember all these acronyms for our social studies class. Most of these acronyms had to do with United Nations (UN) organizations. These included UNESCO, WHO, and IMF. I couldn’t really appreciate all that remembering. I thought elementary (and then high school) were the last time I’d see acronyms.

But when I learned about computers, the terms CPU, RAM, ROM, and FDD were introduced to me. Of course there was also BASIC, COBOL, as well as EBCDIC, ASCII, and BCD.

As I entered college for my BS in Computer Science a lot more acronyms came along as computers now came with hard disk drives (HDDs) and CD-ROMs. Concepts on Operating Systems (OS), RDBMS, PROM, EPROM, OSI, TCP/IP, FTP, WWW, and VR gave my brain even more strain. With optical media nowadays there’s CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R, DVD-RW, and DVD-RW+.

Now that I’m an IT professional for nearly 10 years, the list just gets longer with SQL, HTML, DHTML, XML, PHP, ASP, to name a few. And if you’re not careful you and your colleague may be both talking about ASP but are referring to two totally different things: Application Service Providers or Active Server Pages. When I was a kid soap was just soap and Ajax was a brand of detergent. Now SOAP and AJAX are technologies used on the Internet.

With the abundance OSS (Open Source Software) there is an equivalent number of OSS Licenses. Take GPL, MPL, and LGPL. Of course there are the organizations that push OSS: FSF, OSI, and many others.

But it doesn’t really end there does it? With email, IM, and SMS (text messaging) now common means of communication, more and more acronyms get added to the list everyday. Can you keep up with CUL8R, BTW, IMHO, ROTFL, BCNU, or BRB?

Even love notes are embedded with acronyms. I won’t list them here lest I may accidentally divulge the cryptic codes I share with my wife.

Looking back three years ago, I never thought I would be able to it. Microsoft products were an essential part of my software requirements. But of course except for operating system which came with the PC, the MS Office installation was something that I wasn’t really proud of. The same goes for bootleg copies of Photoshop and other software. I had thought of purchasing legit copies but the cost of software would have caused me to declare bankrupcy.

I was already trying out different flavors of Linux even before. The only hindrance was those Linux versions apperently did not support my hardware. My first attempt was using Slackware. It won’t even boot up from the CD, so I junked that attempt. I then tried Mandrake 8.0 but eventually settled for Fedora when I got a new PC. Around that time, OpenOffice.org was becoming popular. With OO’s support for MS Office formats, which is the most important thing, I never looked back. To top it off I discovered GIMP, which is a lot like Photoshop, except that it was free.

Today, I’m using Linux at home most of the time. The only time I boot to Windows is when I need to visit websites that are use Microsoft controls. At the top of the list of such sites is one of the banks I do business with. Printing in color is another reason for me to boot to Windows as HP’s Linux support is still quite limited. But get this, I still use OpenOffice and GIMP even when I’m in Windows, so I can still say that all my software is legal.

On both platforms, the application software installed are a mix of freeware, free for personal use, and open-source.

The bottom line is you can stay legal. There are a lot of free and open-source software out there that you can use. Most of them are at par with their commercial counterparts.

Many of my colleagues have asked me what they should learn in addition to their RPG/400 skills. I always tell them that they should take time to learn and practice ILE RPG particularly the new language features like /free.

But if they are looking for a challenge, I always say that they should look to Java. It’s difficult to ignore that Java is everywhere today. The Web, desktops, and even mobile devices. Not learning it is a disadvantage. I know that Microsoft .NET people will react to this but the thing is, Java is a cross-platform language. It works on Linux, Windows, iSeries, Solaris, etc. You just can’t say the same for .NET.

Of course, learning and getting to use it in a project are two different things. For my part I know a little of Java but haven’t had the chance to use it in a full-blown project just yet. I have talked to my bosses about this and hopefully we can work something out in the coming months.

Focusing on the midrange platform is great. No doubt about that. Developers belonging to the midrange community are the most sought after IT professionals in the world today. But adding Java to one’s arsenal can only mean greater things. Don’t you think?