RPG: not just for Gamers

I was talking to my friend yesterday about RPG, the programming language. He works for L-3 Communications. He's a programmer. Anyways he wasn't sure what RPG is. I first mentioned that RPG is a prevalent language used at my job. He responded, "Isn't that a gamer language?" Well if you type RPG in Google that will be the majority of the sites you get. I think it comes from the Dungeon & Dragons era of Role Playing Games.

RPG is the acronym for Report Program Generator. It was developed initially around 1960-64 by IBM. So it's been around as long as COBOL, which stands for Common Business Oriented Language. We do use COBOL here in our shop. However I'll post on that later.

RPG has gone through a number of changes. Over they years IBM has released several flavors of RPG.

-RPG about the time of 80-punch car (SCARY) -RPG II the glorious year of 1969 (my birth) -RPG III 1978 new functions like DO, IF-ELSE -RPG IV is the latest uses the ILE RPG compiler

RPG IV allows the programmer to create modules. This point alone will really extend the strength of RPG.

The book I am studying now is RPG IV 3rd edition by Robert Cozzi, Jr. It is a really good book. He has a teaching style that I find easy to read.

I am discovering that to really understand RPG it helps to understand the iSeries IFS, Integrated File System. With the iSeries I have found one tip of Wisdom: "The Library List means Everything." Once you understand that concept it makes programming with RPG or any language in the iSeries a lot easier.

If you want to learn more I suggest RPG IV website.