About

Founded in 1987.

My name is George Alderton, and I’ve been doing this for a long time.

I started out working in Computer stores and developing software for Altair and CP/M Computers (8080s and Z80s) and have been working on IBM Midrange machines since the S/34. After the S/34 came the S/38, AS/400, i Series, and now the IBM i (did I forget some iterations).

I’ve developed systems in BASIC (From the old Altair Basic through VB), C, C++ and C#, some COBOL, Java, PHP and Python and of course RPG (RPGII to modern ILE RPG)

Of all the different platforms I’ve worked on, the IBM i is my favorite. People seem to think that because it runs “Old, Green-Screen) software that it is itself old and obsolete. Clearly they don’t understand. It is a tremendous advantage to be able to run 20+ year old code without modifications (and the expense of upgrading) as long is it is running your business while at the same time being able to use the latest technology, on the same (ultra-reliable) piece of hardware.

In the last year or so, I’ve maintained some old (but still usefull) code. Modernized some old code that needed it, added shop-floor data collection using small, cheap (<$15) controllers communicating via web services and wrote some programs that would create and email spreadsheets in Python. All using an IBM i.

While we’re going through this COVID-19 isolation, my workload has been reduced and it was suggested that I write a blog about some of the things I’ve done on the i. So, I’ve dusted off this old website and will be adding some content soon.