Sylvain Aktepe,
AS/400 developer and trainer

Sylvain is 29 years old and, let’s be honest, studies aren’t his thing: too theoretical. In this context, it’s hardly surprising that he was so unhappy with his BTS in IT SIO, obtained in 2017, that he left to work in supermarkets for over a year (in the fishmonger’s department, please).

IT: je t’aime, moi non plus

However, between two not-yet-fried whiting, it’s a certain sense of customer relations that enables Sylvain to adapt to people, to what they want, to communicate. Thanks to this on-the-job (ice cream) training, Sylvain returned to IT through an AFPA training course, where he finally found his calling: a professional training course with two experienced developers to become a web developer.

This is because the training conditions are different: far from theory, Sylvain works in real-life conditions in a company and uses real-life tools and languages (html, php…) for a year. He qualified as a web developer and web mobil and followed this up with an internship with a company developing WordPress websites.

A month later, Sylvain was contacted by a land development company whose website he was upgrading with full-stack development using PHP 5 and PHP 7. This mission lasts one year.

The AS/400: entering uncharted territory!

Sylvain finally stumbles across an ad posted by Armonie on Indeed: although he’s passionate about computers, he’s never heard of the AS400. Contacted by Jean-Christophe , he joins the iZi 2 academy in March 2022 and joins Armonie on a permanent contract in May 2022 (as planned by the POEI).

“The company, the premises, the people: for me, who needs contacts, I’m not really cut out for telecommuting. At Armonie, the multiple exchanges and the premises appealed to me straight away,” explains Sylvain.

AS/400: from development to training

Hired as an analyst-developer, Sylvain progressed to become half-developer, half-trainer today: a junior “Patou”. Sylvain is 70% TMA and 30% training. It develops, modernizes code or adds features. The aim is to bring a new vision and new technologies to modernize the AS/400.

As far as training is concerned, Sylvain teaches in-house developers to work in DevOps mode (rollback) so that they can document new developments as fully as possible, and thus avoid falling into the trap of having developed something 30 years ago for which there is no paper trail.

“I like to share my knowledge, but I especially like it when others share theirs: I’m beginning to understand the whole evolution of the IBM i. I’ve fallen in love with the IBMI AS/400 and the RPG. I’ve fallen in love with the IBMI AS/400 and RPG, and it’s finally something I like, and we’re finally touching the machine.” concludes Sylvain.