Dumb Joke of the Month My landlord called, said he wanted to discuss why my heating bills were so high. I said “Sure! My door is always open.” Retrieving a Display Session’s IP Address This is a question that comes up quite frequently. It’s often useful for a program running on the IBM i to know…
Deep Thought of the Month “I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won’t last out the year.” – The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957. When to Use or…
Bad Joke of the Month: Yesterday, I ate a clock. It was very time consuming…especially when I went back for seconds. Enumeration Support On October 10, IBM announced the latest RPG features. Among the new features were Enumerations (sometimes called ‘mnemonics’) – which is a group of named constants meant to identify all of the…
Bad Joke of the Month: A friend went Axe Throwing. I asked if she ever tried it blind folded. She replied, “No.” so I said “You don’t know what you’re missing!” %LEFT and %RIGHT Built-in Functions On October 10, IBM announced the latest RPG features. Among the new features were the %LEFT and %RIGHT built-in…
Bad Joke of the Month: Q: Why do programmers prefer dark mode?A: Because light attracts bugs. Environment Variables in Cobol? Why not? After posting last month’s blog post about environment variables, I was asked by a reader if it’s possible to use environment variables in a Cobol program. The answer? Yes, of course! You see,…
Deep thought: Computers and AI will never be able to replace human programmers until they learn to laugh at the boss’s bad jokes. You Should Use Environment Variables I’ve noticed that not too many traditional IBM i programmers are using environment variables. I’ve been wondering why because I find them to be very useful. I’ve…
Joke of the month: Crow: Excuse me, ma’am, would you like to donate to my charity? Woman: Maybe, what is it called? Crow: CAW! CAW! CAW! CAW! Woman: I don’t understand! Crow: It’s four good caws! Spring 2023 Enhancements to SELECT/WHEN The RPG SELECT/WHEN statements have been enhanced to allow for a single condition with…
Joke of the Month A woman walks into a bar with a lizard on her shoulder, has a seat at a table and waits patiently for the waiter. When the waiter arrives, he says “Welcome! What an interesting pet! What is his name?” The woman responds “Tiny.” The waiter, surprised, says “That’s an unusual name…
Are you taking advantage of the built-in functions offered in the CL programming language? I was helping a colleague write a CL program recently, and I discovered that he didn’t know about all of the amazing functions IBM has added to CL over the past few years!