Glad to have you back for this week's IBM i Pulse! Each week we will be taking a deeper look at the latest IBM i and Profound Logic news. 

From Our Experts:

• Ted Holt discusses Three Suboptimal I/O Practices in his latest IT Jungle article.
  
  
• Brian May shows you how to pay it forward in his latest article,  Gifts You Can Give the IBM i Community

Profound Logic News:

• IT Jungle highlighted our own CEO Alex Roytman in their latest article - Reckless or Riskless: IBM i App Dev Experts Talk Security.
  
  
• Profound Logic developers Scott Klement and Brian May will be in attendance at this year's WMPCA Conference.  Make sure you register today!

Educational Resources:

• Alex Roytman shows you the secret on how to build a database-driven, single page, Node.js applications with Profound.js.
  
  
• Featured Video: Liam Allan discusses how Using GIT with Profound.js Makes IBM i Development Easier.

Product News:

• Profound UI 5.13 is now available! If you are a current Profound UI customer you can download the latest version on our Download Page.
  
  
• If you need some assistance in updating Profound UI from an older version (or even a VERY old version) you can follow this week's blog on how to Easily Update Profound UI.

Industry News:

User Questions, and Expert Answers That Prove RPG is Strategic by Steve Will

Recently Steve Will wrote an article on teaching RPG to IBM i developers (we highlighted that article in one of our latest IBM i Pulse Blog posts). This article sparked a lot of comments and follow up questions. Some of those questions were important enough to highlight in a separate blog for Steve. Here are some of those questions and answers:

1. Given that IBM has invested a lot of resources into porting mainstream-language environments to PASE, what is it then that still makes RPG strategic?

So, what makes RPG strategic is a combination of requirement, capability and investment... Most new function is written in more than one language, so RPG is not the only strategic language. But it is a key part of the IBM i strategy...

See the whole answer to all the questions here

The 12 Biggest Issues IT Faces Today by Paul Heltzel

• IoT Security - "82 percent of organizations struggle to identify and secure network-connected devices. Worse, most were unclear on who is responsible for managing the devices."
• Retraining - "About 40 percent of IT workers say they’re not getting the training they need to be effective in their jobs, according to a recent CompTIA survey."
• Skills Gap - "The good news is the number of IT job openings continues to increase. The bad? There aren’t enough workers with needed skills to fill them, particularly in security roles."