Kevin Vandever

No, not my Great American Novel. That is still buried somewhere in the recesses of my soul. I’m talking about my latest technical endeavor, Subfiles in Free-Form RPG. This is an update to a book I wrote just over 11 years ago. It was the publisher’s highest selling book on that particular subject and many weeks made the monthly top ten sold list. Those were the good old days of RPG and the AS/400, but as you might have guessed, with technology changing so rapidly, those days went bye bye with the Y2K scare. So, imagine my shock and dismay at being asked to write a second edition of that book in late 2009.

“Why?” was my profound inquiry.

“Because people are asking for it, DUH!” was the prompt response. Ok, I added the “DUH” part, but I really think it was assumed.

So, I did a little research myself and to more shock and dismay, I discovered that there was a young crop of overseas and US developers learning the midrange market (that’s the IBM computer market that houses the RPG language) and these developers were looking for updated materials on various programming techniques, subfiles being one of those techniques. In the end, still a little apprehensive on what the long term market really was for this kind of book, I decided to give it a go. Besides, if the publisher was willing to take a chance, why shouldn’t I? Plus, I thought it’d be cool to write another book.

So, after almost two years in the making, with some starts, stops, delays, lots of writing, coding, testing, and editing, the book is out.

If you have an RPG programmer in your life…please tell me because I will be shocked, but more importantly, steer him or her to this book. Reading it will be a mind altering, life changing event for that lucky programmer and you can feel good about yourself for having enabled the experience. If not, well, I think it will make a grand coffee table coaster or conversation piece, and I bet it would work way better than those stupid rubber door stoppers that never function properly and you end up bashing your toe trying to kick the thing under the door. Yeah, better than that.

If you have a comment or want to know what the hell Free-Form RPG is, leave a note here or pop over to the Subfiles in RPG tab on this site.

Thanks.

written by Kevin Vandever \\ tags: AS/400, iSeries, RPG, Subfiles, System i