From their inceptions, IBM i and RPG (also known as IBM RPG) have remained a formidable duo when it comes to the development and execution of business applications. Over the years, IBM i has evolved into the most powerful, reliable, and secure operating system, even for data-heavy applications. And in this case, most enterprises still leverage this platform for their business operations.
Introduced in 1959 for the IBM i 1401, RPG has evolved into a fully procedural programming language and still remains fundamental to the IBM i operating environment. However, the number of willing RPG developers has been on a steady decline for the past decade. Those who developed and maintained RPG applications in the past are either retired or nearing retirement. According to a developers’ study, 33% of RPG programmers retired in 2020.
What’s more, young talents are reportedly heading to other languages like Java, C++, and Delphi. Therefore, making it increasingly difficult for enterprises to find quality replacements as they’re limited to a dwindling talent pool.
Constantly changing customer demands and the need to accelerate application development means you can’t afford to wait around till you find a worthy RPG developer. So, how can you solve this RPG recruitment problem? What if you don’t have to recruit any more RPG developers? With Visual LANSA, a powerful low code platform, you can eliminate your recruitment needs and simply leverage your existing developers.
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How can Visual LANSA can solve your RPG recruitment problem?
What is Visual LANSA?
Visual LANSA is a powerful low code application development platform for mobile, web, and desktop applications. The Visual LANSA hybrid low-code approach means you can build entire enterprise applications more efficiently than any other low-code app builder on the market. Providing developers with all the tools, they will ever need in one IDE streamlines the entire application development process. No need to learn other development languages as hybrid low-code eliminates the workarounds needed in other low-code platforms. Whether you are building enterprise progressive web apps or desktop apps, there isn’t a more efficient method to develop your applications.
What are low-code tools?
Low-code tools are visual development environments built to facilitate digital transformations by simplifying and accelerating enterprises’ application development and deployment processes. This platform uses simple logic with visual features such as; drag and drop modelers and pre-built connectors in place of long lines of code. This way, it empowers non-developers who can customize the tools they need with minimal programming knowledge.
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How Does It Help With Legacy Applications?
You don’t have to change your backend.
When modernizing legacy applications, it is imperative that you consider solutions that can integrate and utilize existing systems. Visual LANSA provides solutions that enable you to preserve your backend and make it available to other systems via a REST API.
Over half of the software is for internal tooling.
Internal tooling plays a critical role in the success of an organization. This was proven further in a survey of about 310 internal tools developers, where 80% believe internal tooling is critical to their company’s operational success. In this case, Visual LANSA dedicates over half of its solutions to internal tooling.
Enforce business rules in one place and duplicate them everywhere.
LANSA’s Business Rules Engine and Data Services Layer promote a different approach. Here, you can define and enforce system-wide business rules and data constraints throughout all LANSA-developed applications, regardless of what platform they are deployed on.
Can be deployed to any platform, web, mobile
Changing server platforms or databases can be extremely disruptive. In fact, it can be downright hard. However, LANSA’s multiple deployments and migration capabilities offer you the freedom to deploy on whatever platform you want your application to run.
No-Code to Full-Code: The New Spectrum of Application Development
Faster delivery of applications is a must for businesses to be innovative, and the only way to achieve this is to change the way they are built. It’s this need that has given rise to the emergence of low-code software development platforms. This white paper seeks to explore the spectrum of application development methods, their different uses, and their pros and cons. It covers no-code, low-code, and full-code (traditional development methods) and explains their suitability for different projects, who should use them and how they can be most effective.
How Can It Help With RPG Recruitment?
You Don’t Have To Do It
Up until a few years ago, every software developer was a coder. It was the only possible way to build applications. However, in today’s constantly changing technological environment, there’s the need for businesses to adapt accordingly. This need is, however, accompanied by the steady increase in the adoption of low-code/no-code platforms like Visual LANSA. With Visual LANSA, you don’t need the extra pair of developer hands to accelerate your application development and deployment. You can utilize your existing team, as developers can use the same skills to write client-side code, server-side code, and everything in between with LANSA’s high-level language.
The Biggest Problems Teams Face With Critical Internal Tooling Is Not Enough Time
In the same survey mentioned earlier, when asked about their biggest problem with building internal tools, more than half of the respondents referred to not having enough time as their biggest problem. Visual LANSA solves that. With this platform, you can get the most out of your team within a short time frame. Here, accelerating your application development process is a no-brainer. Its high-level language shields developers from having to support and become experts in many different languages and technologies. Therefore, increasing productivity.
Also, you don’t need to create bespoke applications for every part of your company, as the Visual LANSA low-code platforms enable every developer to work on any part of an application.
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How Can It Help Your Recruitment Problems?
Utilize The Domain Experience Of The Employees That Use Your Application
For example, suppose your employees have been working in a particular language. In that case, you don’t need to retrain existing developers or recruit new developers to build modern applications that may require other skillsets. With Visual LANSA, you can leverage your existing employees’ domain experience in building modern applications.
No Need For Specialist Developers For Web, Mobile, And Native
Again, when looking to create web, mobile, and native desktop applications, you can leverage your existing team, regardless of their skill set. Visual LANSA provides a single integrated development environment (IDE) for building desktop, mobile online, offline, and hybrid apps. This solution equips developers to build mobile, web, and desktop applications using one platform and one set of skills for the front-end, back-end, and database. In other words, Visual LANSA enables developers to become ‘full-stack’ developers without having to learn all the languages, frameworks, and plug-ins required for mobile development.
Use Your Resources More Effectively
Not only is recruitment difficult because of the dwindling talent, as earlier stated, it is also expensive. Since Visual LANSA eliminates the need for additional recruitments, you can focus your resources on creating more important business solutions.
Make Internal Tools That Actually Save Your Company Time
While the targeted users of internal tools do dictate the design, features, and functionalities of these tools, you must build tools that are easy to maintain and can actually save your company time. In this case, Visual LANSA can help you build useful internal tools that can simplify your organization’s workflow. Also, in the face of the increasing need for customized applications, Visual LANSA sets you up perfectly to build scalable internal-facing applications at a low cost. Hence, allowing you to empower your employees to solve business problems in a shorter time.
Are You Ready To Let LANSA Solve Your RPG Recruitment Problems?
It is no longer news that sourcing developers can be difficult, let alone RPG developers. Therefore, company’s cannot afford to recruit more developers in a bid to accelerate improvements.
In today’s environment of constantly changing customer demands and technology trends, Visual LANSA provides the much-needed solution to enable businesses to accelerate their application development process at a low cost.
Are you ready to leverage your existing team to drive productivity and modernization? Contact us.
