It's been quite some time I didn't write anything because I'm working on a project and required to be stationed at a client place which doesn't allow access to the Internet. And I'm mentally and physically feeling tired at home because I commute to work
by train these days.
I've been working on software development using high level and modern programming language (Java for my case) for years. Due to the memory consumption of Java/.NET applications, I (and my coworkers) always complain about the relatively low-end hardware specification of my workstation. Similarly, due to the high pace evolution of Java and .NET, I believe none of the .NET/Java developers nowadays would be happy with Windows 95/98 installed on his/her machine. Anyway, in most cases we probably wouldn't be able to code with old hardware and sofware.
At the client side, my team and the team from the other software vendor are sharing the same office. Coincidentally my former collegemate is there and he is using
RPG (
Report
Program
Generator, one of the first program generators designed for business reports, introduced in 1964 by IBM) for working. Wonder how he works?
Not much special actually, he's also using Windows, with a terminal software which can connect to AS400, log in and start coding. Left aside the terminal software GUI, what I could see is barely the black color background and green color text. If he's good in Windows shortcut keys, he can even throw his mouse away. After some briefing given by him, I got to know that the arrow keys are so important because it has to be very much dealing with vertical and horizontal coordinates.
I can never imagine I could ever possible working with such language and coding behaviors. I have lots of
fancy IDE free choices, I can anytime play around with visual designer using the darn cool drag-n-drop feature, I can always debate with my friends which open source framework/tool to use, I explore and research the ways to develop with
AJAX which make colorful Web application more user friendly and responsive, and so on and so forth.
I do know that there are many programmers out there using Cobol, RPG or etc. to develop application for mainframe and mini-computer, but I never had the chance to know exactly how they work. Glad to meet you again, my
TARC's friend!
As a Java developer, should I request more than what I currently have?
