Power Programming Point: The importance of soft skills

In today's business market where we can find a great amount of highly skilled developers, soft skills are setting apart the most successful workers inside a company.

Now that I have more than ten years of experience, when I go to an interview, the interviewers are more interested in my soft skills. They are interested in how I will fit their organization and their working environment, getting along with the other employers and being interested in my work.

Smart managers will try to be certain that you can at least go up one position. They don't want to hire someone who is only skilled to work in the position to which they are hiring. They want people who want to grow inside the company and bring value to them.

Many developers are concerned about programming and doing what they are told but, in reality, those who learn more about the big picture, the company environment, the business, are considered better options when time for promotions or bonus arrive.

So, do not forget that you have to work on your soft skills. Be nice to your co-workers, show interest in what you are doing, try to help your boss when defining your own works, bring constructive ideas to the table and, above all, think about how you can improve the company's system as whole, not only your own part

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Important ideas for Power Programmers

In order to succeed in today's business world you must be more than just a programmer. You must be a Power Programmer, a technician capable of delivering the best solutions, in less time, with less need for supporter and less problems.

These Power Programmers must have the following ideas in mind:

1. understand the business in which they work is essential;
2. program and system documentation are very important;
3. following programming standards improves the work;
4. being proactive will make them outstanding among the others;
5. being a problem solver is a great asset;
6. communication is a necessary ability.

Do you know another important idea for programmers to better succeed today? Leave a commentary or send me an e-mail. Thanks.

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Cobol and Artificial Intelligence: Can we make a match?

I have always been interested in Artificial Intelligence. I think it is one of the limits to what we can do, yet.

Last night I came across some guidelines to help in creating a Mind using COBOL. I think that the idea behind this site is instigate people, COBOL developer to be more specific, to create a mind using different programming languages. They expect programmers to create the different modules they suggest and integrate them.

I could not find out if someone is trying to do it. If you find out, please tell me, I’m really curious to know the results.

Maybe I will undertake the task.

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How is COBOL today?

I finally came across a fair article about COBOL looking at it from a business point of view instead of a technical one. Many IT theorists have been claiming COBOL's death for decades but I believe that the majority of them look at the language as academics.

As Mr. Abraham points out in his article, “[COBOL] is a basic fact of business life.” It is a fundamental tool for business. Many companies that started decades ago have been using it and now COBOL supports their system. Industries like Bank, Insurance, Credit Cards use it effectively and instead of concentrated on changing it, they are trying to integrate it with new tools to increase its power and capabilities.

Today’s concern about COBOL developers retiring and leaving companies helpless may be linked to a different agenda, trying to promoting another languages. I have worked in Portugal and Brazil and I know that there are many young programmers there and a few universities still teach COBOL. However, the majority of the students are not too interested because their professors allege the language is dying or dead.

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When programmers and analysts can't compreehend each other

I like to believe that programmers are becoming extinct. They should be giving place to analyst-programmers or developers. The difference? While programmers depend on someone to tell them which programs to change or create, developers (or analyst-programmers) should understand what have to be done and decide how to do it.

Probably, the best developers are the ones capable of understanding the big picture when they are working instead of being aware of their specific task only. Systems today are vast and business oriented so, the more a developer understands the business, the better their solutions will be.

Deeply, all concepts are changing programmers are becoming developers, and programs are becoming solutions, even when a project involves maintenances primarily. Usually there are lots of programs to change when maintenance is required.

The inability that some programmers have to understand business concepts or points of view usually impair their ability to develop a good solution. As a result we may have a solution who will require lots of adjustments closer to implementation or the programmer will spend more time trying to grasp the solution's needs.

One of the basic requisites of Decision Making and Critical Thinking is understanding the environment. It cannot be different when developers are working. They must understand what they are dealing with in order to reach better results.

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Power Programming Point: Cobol/DB2 - A Powerful Duo

When you integrate COBOL and DB2 in a mainframe environment you can certainly expect for a very efficient acess to your data whether your SQL access is direct or not. To improve your results you can count on DB2 tools. They allow you to analyze and improve your queries.

What happens when you have DB2 in your COBOL program?
When you compile a COBOL program with DB2, the SQL commands embedded in your code will suffer a binding process. When a bind occurs DB2 creates an access path for that SQL Command. DB2 optimizer helps in creating this access path using statistics generated by the Runstas tool based on tables sizes, columns cardinalities, and indexes clustering.

The access path is defined in a way that efficiency is improved; however, if the table or the SQL commands are poorly defined, the result will be worse than expected. We should use DB2 explain tool to create a report showing how data will be accessed and, after analyzing it, improve the SQL, or the table when possible, to obtain a faster access to data.

The main point here is that, sometimes, your data will not be accessed as you thought. Sometimes, if you are acessing part of a key restraining the fields not with an igual condition, optimizer may decide that the most efficient way to obtain your data is using a table scan i.e. scanning the entire table.

To finalize, I suggest you analyze the Explain result after compiling/binding your program. This way you will know how the data will be accessed and will have more control over the results and your program's efficiency. I'll talk about Explain later.

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Power Programming Point: Is Mainframe Cobol still dying?

I have been working in the IT field, with COBOL, for more than ten years and since I started Cobol's death is being declared.

It was my first year in University, I remember the professor saying, "Cobol is a third-generation programming language which is dying. New, more advanced languages will eventually take its place." Two years later, everyone started worrying about the Y2K, and many people realized that there were still billions of lines of code in COBOL and billions were added every year.

In 1996, the Gartner Group reported that 80% of the world's business ran on COBOL. A Computerworld survey, involving IT managers, done last year found out that 62% of them are using COBOL.

Among the reasons for COBOL to be alive are the costs to substitute it and the risks involved as many back-end processes have years of accumulated business rules implemented by programmers or even analysts who are no longer working at the company.

Some companies are gradually substituting COBOL for other languages while others are no longer developing new applications using it. The reasons to move away from COBOL are usually one of these three:

1. reduce cost of ownership;
2. address the alleged COBOL skills deficit;
3. or the mistaken idea that it will make the business more agile.
   

On the other hand, there are still many companies who recognize the robustness, reliability and simplicity of COBOL as well as its capacity to be integrated with more modern languages like Java. I have worked in systems running COBOL, CICS and DB2 in the back-end and Java in the middle tier making it possible to use any kind of front-end as long as it can communicate with Java.

I do not believe COBOL will die in the near future. It is a reliable, simple and robust language that can be easily taught and used. The fact that it can be integrated with another languages give it more portability and open a wide range of possibilities like a fancy system, with a beautiful front-end and a fast, reliable tool working in the back-end to hand in the information.

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Welcome to the Power Programming Point

Hi, there
I know many programmers are happy with the way they deal with their amount of work or their tasks, but there are ways to improve the results of their work.
Here, at the Power Programming Point, I will share my experience. I've been in business for a long time mostly working for large insurance companies with IT department comprising hundreds of employees.
Since I started, I've been focused on technics to improve the quality of my work and, by keeping my eyes open and my interest in the field sharp, I can assure that I have learned a lot. I am willing to share with you all I've learned. Your skills will certainly be improved.
Welcome aboard.
Best regards,

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