Re: why rpg and not cobol

"Dave" wrote

I would like to know why RPG is the principal language on the i. Has
it always been so since the days of the AS400 and beyond? Is it just
an IBM thing?

TheBorg wrote:

Because the primarily language on the predecessor systems was RPG?
;-)

Here is my understanding of it.

Back in the 1960s, IBM Rochester was the division that made plugboard-programmable unit record machines. They had been tasked with developing a new generation of unit record machines; instead, they invented the first IBM Midrange computer, the System/3.

The prevailing thought at the time was that for a computer, you needed a programmer, wheras the geeky kid in the mailroom could wire a plugboard for a unit record machine. Since the target market for the S/3 was existing unit record machine customers, it needed a language that would be easy for that geeky kid in the mailroom to learn.

They already had one: RPG. Anybody who'd wired a plugboard could quickly learn to understand and code RPG.

So in 1969, IBM introduced the S/3, with RPG II. And over the years, the S/3 begat the S/32 the S/34, the S/38, the S/36 (a dead-end), and the AS/400 (which began as a tweaked S/38), and RPG stuck with it, evolving as it went, but still (until fairly recently) keeping the "virtual plugboard" syntax intact.

--
JHHL