I have worked with IBM i and AS/400 for decades, but my real job has never been merely writing programs. It is finding what makes work difficult and improving the system around it.
I had occasionally written on LinkedIn about everyday life and my cat, Kyosuke. This time I wanted to write more seriously about IBM AS/400—today’s IBM i.
I have worked with the platform since joining the systems department. In fact, when I arrived, it was still the IBM System/38. Yet I have never thought of myself as simply a programmer or systems engineer.
My job is to discover what people in the workplace are struggling with, why an operation evolved into its current form, and where the real problem lies—then improve it as a working system.
Across clinical laboratories and manufacturing, I have worked on attendance management, laboratory information systems, report infrastructure, and paperless operations. The principle was always the same: use systems to make human work better.
This series is one record of that way of working, and of what IBM i made possible when development stayed close to the people using it.
CHAPTER 03 · PART 01 · EPISODE 1 / 6 STORIES · 35 STORIES TOTAL