Liam Allan habla sobre Node en IBM i

 Liam Allan, como Scott Klement, han dado un impulso formidable al IBM i (AKA AS/400, iseries), explorando, popularizando y explotando los sucesivos cambios tecnológicos habidos en el equipo desde hace años. El comentario sobre Node lo hace Liam en la entrevista que Charles Guarino le hace en TechChannel. La participación de Liam, reciente, ha implicado cambios radicales en el modo de encarar al IBM i, comenzando por su editor de programas. Debemos decir que el ambiente y las prácticas relacionadas con el IBM i históricamente han sido más vale conservadoras, apropiadas para un set de equipos que solía ser el núcleo del procesamiento de las empresas que lo usaban. Dice Guarino sobre este aspecto: I still think there’s still a lot of newbies—even the most seasoned RPG developers are still newbies—and open-source makes them nervous, perhaps because it’s a whole different paradigm, a whole different vernacular. Everything about it is different, yet obviously there are so many similarities, but the terminology is very different. Klement y quienes lo siguieron, y ahora Allan, han representado una renovación y actualización más que conveniente,  necesaria.

Por mi parte, dándole vueltas a su uso con Plex. Ya Klement ha potenciado su integración con sus propuestas a nivel de integración de lenguajes java y c/c++ a través de ILE.

 Lo dicho sobre Node:

Charlie: (...) So Liam, I do have a lot of things that I want to talk to you about, but when I think of you lately what comes to my mind is Node. I mean I kind of associate you with just Node and how you really are really running with that technology, especially on IBM i, but I think there are a lot of people who don’t quite understand where that fits in, what Node actually is and how it fits on your platform. So what can you say about that in general?

Liam: Absolutely. So I mean, there’s a few points to be made. I guess I’ll start with the fact that you know, it is 80% of my working life is writing typescript and Javascript. So I spend most of my days in it now, which is great. A few years ago, it was more like 50% and each year it’s growing more and more. So I usually focus on how it can integrate with IBM i. So you know having Node.js code, whether it’s typescript or Javascript talking to IBM i via the database—so, calling programs, fetching data, updating data; you know, the minimal standard kind of driver type stuff that you do, crud, things like that. What I especially like about Node on IBM i is that it is made for high input/outputs. It’s great at handling large volumes of data and most people that are using IBM i tend to have tons of data, right? Db2 for i has been around for centuries at this point; it’s older than I am, and I can make that joke. No one else can make that joke but I can make it and you know it’s been around for the longest time. And so people have got all of this data and in my opinion Node.js is just a great way to express that data—you know, via an API. I think it’s fast. It’s got high throughput and yeah, it’s a synchronous in its standard. It’s easy to use, it’s easy to deploy, it’s easy to write code for especially. One of the reasons I like is the fact that I can have something working within 20 minutes. It’s a fantastic piece of technology and it’s been out for a while. I mean it’s been out for like 10 years, 10 years plus at this point. It’s just fun to use. I really enjoy it and I encourage other people to use it too.