I've read a number of so called "technical" articles or blogs for this
midrange community in which the authors have clearly run out of technical topics. I
don't usually find that to be the case for me with RPG Coder, but I do
appreciate the situation. This newsletter has provided consistent
technical content since its first issue. In fact, I've been creating technical
content since the first issue of my "Q38" newsletter back in 1983. That newsletter
pre-dates the first issue of NEWS/34, this website's predecessor, by more than
60 days. But this week I thought I would talk about something I'm going to be
doing—something important—one of the most non-technical things you can do. I'm
visiting with my U.S. Congressman about the state of IT in North America.
That's right, Mr. Cozzi is going to Washington (well, actually just down the
street to the District office) to try to solicit congressional support for IT
software development in this country. Not "support" like farmers get for not
growing food; but rather support to help stop the thinking that outsourcing IT
development is somehow good for us. I want to encourage students who want to
work in a technical field to consider programming. I see this as a "Top Gun"
school for programmers.
I'm not talking about all the IT workers who entered the market during the
dot-com boom to make big bucks for doing a marginal job while giving IT a bad
name. I'm talking about people who want to do what they love and find IT and
programming interesting. Without skilled IT programmers, who will write code for
our national security systems? Who will crack the code of our enemies? Who will
write the application systems that our companies need to stay competitive? Who
will be able to do IT forensics?
Today a large portion of corporate applications are outsourced to companies
that employ many third-world citizens. This is great news for their economy, and it's
good for the bottom line, when it works. But rarely does it work; and yet the
thought of cheap labor performing the equivalent of a highly trained IT
professional is too enticing to pass up. So time and time again, an outsourcing
decision is made, IT professionals lose their jobs, and inevitably the project
fails.
The basic issue here is money—we've seen it happen time and time again,
first in electronics, then cars, then computers, and now just about everything
is outsourced.
But software development is an art and a skill and a national security
asset. Granted, if we continue to outsource, our overseas competitors can and will
improve. When they do, in an ironic twist, they too may be outsourced.
But at the end of the day, where does that leave us? By hiring those third-world
IT workers, IT professionals here are leaving this industry by the thousands.
Now that's not entirely bad news, as many were those dot-com opportunists,
but many are great programmers just fed up with the situation. Who will
do the things that need to be done if all the good programmers are gone?
As one of those who knows a lot about IT and development, I find that fewer
and fewer classic IT workers are staying in touch with one another, sharing
ideas, asking questions, and really want to do a great job. Even some of the
"good ones" have stagnated in their knowledge. And then there's
that other group—you know the ones—they tend to only hire people who they feel are dumber
than they are in some screwy attempt to look superior to corporate execs.
And that means things don't get done quickly and those
same execs are more open to outsourcing suggestions.
I find a huge percentage of the questions I receive or read on forums are from third-world programmers who
effectively don't know how to declare a file in RPG. Yet, Corporate America is
paying them $20/day to write code just like the IT professional they let go. How's that working out for you?
You want to know why .NET is so often advocated by these outsourcing firms?
When you only know .NET the whole world looks like .NET.
Can General Electric (GE) send out hundreds of millions of vendor payments
each quarter using a PC server with .NET installed? Certainly not. Can a one-person
consultant sitting in his or her loft send out billing info using QuickBooks
or some .NET and Excel solution? Of course. But as an IT professional, would you
even consider recommending the .NET or QuickBooks solution to GE? Things that don't
scale, fail.
So today I'm going to speaking to Congress and ask them to consider
this situation as a national security issue. I want them to help
encourage software development as a national interest. This often means tax
breaks, but instead, I think establishing and promoting higher-technology programs in
schools is what's called for. I'd like to see a good percentage of the college
grads graduate knowing how to program with a compiled language. I would
certainly like people to understand what capacity and thresholds mean, two terms
that were critical in i systems lasting as long as they have—far beyond what IBM
ever thought they would. But grads should have this knowledge so that no matter
where they end up in Corporate America,
they know that a program written in Visual Basic on a PC running their
checkbook may not have the capability to support General Electric's accounts
payables systems.