First Sip Today’s coffee is a familiar Dunkin’ medium roast. Dependable. No surprises. That’s fitting, because the most important skill for an RPG developer is the same way. It doesn’t get conference talks. It doesn’t trend on LinkedIn. But without it, nothing else really works. The most important skill for an RPG developer isn’t RPG. It’s system thinking . RPG Is the Entry Point, Not the Destination RPG is how we express logic. IBM i is where that logic lives. Too many developers treat RPG like an isolated craft: Write the program Compile it Test the happy path Move on That mindset works for small, disposable systems. IBM i systems are neither small nor disposable. An RPG program exists inside a living environment: Jobs with lifecycles and priorities Subsystems tuned for specific workloads Data that has survived mergers, audits, and regulation Schedulers, batch windows , and operational constraints You don’t “ju...