Joel Cochran

I never thought that I would end up working with computers. I've been around them since my Dad brought home the first Commodore 64 on our block: my friends and I were engrossed with the original "Zork". I remember later being insanely jealous of the boy across the street who actually had a Tape Drive! I even took a Basic programming class when I was twelve. My Dad was one of the first journalists to embrace Computer Assisted Reporting and so he was always very eager for me to use our computer for more practical reasons.

As boys are prone to doing, I rebelled when I was about 17. I went "retro" before it was cool: I asked for and received a typewriter which I proudly lugged off to college with me the following fall. My rebellion didn't last long though as I soon discovered that most papers in my major fields (English and Philosophy) were required to be prepared on ... a Word Processor. I even learned how to use some early Macintosh drawing programs, which I found mildly amusing, but I still never really connected with computers. I just didn't get it: they were clunky, unmanageable, soulless machines.

After graduating from college I did what all Philosophy Majors do... nothing. Unfortunately, it doesn't pay well and the benefits suck, so I enlisted in the Army. After training I made the mistake of letting our Battalion Sergeant-Major know that I was familiar with computers. I ended up riding a desk for over half my time in the Army: word processing, Excel spreadsheets, Power Point presentations, and DBase applications. The Army originally crawled on its stomach, and then floated on a sea of paper: now it slides on silicon. Everything in the Army is done on computers. I slowly realized that there was no escape.

I held out one bastion of hope: golf. When I left the Army, my wife and I moved to Florida so that I could play golf full time. Seven months later I was looking for gainful employment, which I found at an AS/400 based software company. Within a year I had moved through the support ranks and was offered training and a full time position as an RPG programmer. I took to RPG like a fish out of water: with the AS/400 and RPG I had finally found my niche. I will be eternally grateful to the people who gave me that opportunity. I gave in to computers so completely that I even went back to school and earned a Masters of Science in Computer Information Systems (MSCIS).

My family and I have since returned home to the beautiful Shenandoah Valley. Since 2000 I have been the Director of Research and Development for a very small AS/400 software company in Staunton, Virginia. In that time we have moved all of our software from RPGII-styled RPGIII to V5R1 RPGIV in ILE. We have a very successful RPG CGI Internet site at http://www.vamanet.com and we extensively use SQLRPGLE, /free, the IFS, Apache, Tomcat, AFPDS overlays, and are constantly experimenting with just about anything we can get our hands on like handheld technology and GIS.

While RPG is still my specialty, I have embraced and studied other technologies: Java, mySQL, PHP, CSS, XHTML, JavaScript, Visual Basic, PERL, Linux, and more. My style of development is greatly influenced by some of these, especially object oriented design which I think is fantastic. Although I don't think we'll ever see OO RPG, I do think we can institute a lot of the theories into our development methods. I hope that I can somehow be influential in that regard. If not, I at least hope you find something of interest in my site. In either case you must ask your self: is it time to take your RPG to the Next level?

Joel Cochran

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