Not the good kind of RPG

I like RPGs (Role Playing Games). I do not like RPGs (Rocket Propelled Grenades) pointed at me. I was forced to take a class in RPG (Report Program Generator) in college. Where I work, RPG is still used. I am fortunate enough not to work in it.

RPG – or, as it was known initially, Report Program Generator – got its start in 1959 on the transistor-based IBM 1401. At the time, it was a fairly novel and advanced idea. RPG was a generator for programs that produced reports based on declarative specifications. The specs, of course, were defined on a big ol’ pile of punchcards.

Unlike COBOL, RPG was designed for end-users like accountants who were already familiar with tabulation machines. To this day, many RPG programmers come from a non-technical/computer environment (such as accounting), either with an interest in learning computers or with an interest in just getting a job.

One of the novelties of RPG’s design was that it operated as a “program cycle.” Basically, this meant that programs would run in an implicit loop over every record in a file. Control structures such as IF-ELSE and DO-LOOP were simply non existent and, perhaps, unnecessary at the time of RPG's inception.