Google “RPG”, and your first hits will be about role playing games. But before there were Role Playing Games, there was RPG (Report Program Generator). This was the name of a computer programming language developed in the 1960′s by IBM. It was designed to generate reports (thus the name) in a terse, simple way. It used a cycle of input, process and output that was built into the language, so that you did not have to issue formal instructions to the computer to read the data files; you just described the file using fixed -format File specifications and Input specifications, entered the necessary Calculation specifications, then output the report in the format described in the Output specifications. Your humble correspondent, without a lick of Computer Science education, learned the language (RPG II) from the manager of a small RPG shop (in a class he held in his kitchen) well enough to write non-trivial programs in a matter of weeks (one class per week). It was easy.

Today, that language has become RPGIV, reflecting continuing enhancements that make it an extremely effective language for manipulating data. You will not likely use it to write an operating system or make pictures dance around on your screen, but computers used by tens of thousands of businesses have it as their base computer language, generating reports and entering and displaying data.

The future of RPG today, though, is in doubt, even though programs totaling billions of lines of code are running today on hundreds of thousands of machines. This is a reflection of the state of computer science today, as well as an example of the fact that, too often, what is often serviceable and effective is set aside.for what is fashionable.

In programming, the fashion today is centered around the Web, and languages associated with the Web – Java, Perl, Python, Ruby, C++, Visual Basic, Javascript, and so on – visually oriented languages, for the most part. Can RPG do the Web? Yes, but you have to jump through hoops to make it work. There is no facility in RPG that allows it to use HTML as effortlessly as its customary screen display files. And there are forms of RPG from IBM and ASNA that resemble VB and Java with their Windows displays, but they are by no means nearly as ubiquitous as VB. The kids learn VB or teach themselves Java or C- they do not learn RPG. It is not sexy; RPG is like its cousin COBOL – they are functional business languages, but Windows and Web processing have to be grafted onto them to work on Windows or the Web. RPG can be used in conjunction with Java on the AS/400; it works quite well to use Java for the user interface and RPG for the core business logic; but people tend want to forget the RPG and use something (anything) else.

In short, all RPG has going for it is that it works. It runs on a machine (the AS/400 or iSeries or Series i) with a database (DB2) incorporated into the hardware- no extra database software, though it can run SQL (and RPG can call and run SQL statements). The operating system (OS/400) makes even Linux seem to run flaky by comparison, without the need for systems administrators, and the machine it runs on seems to run forever. There is no such thing as the “blue screen of death”; at least, I haven’t seen one in almost 30 years. (For a long time, Microsoft ran its business on the AS/400, well into the latter half of the 1990′s.) RPG can call C++ and Java programs, and they can call RPG routines. It can also run HTML, with a little bit of extra effort.

Perhaps RPG and the AS/400 are too good at what they do. You can run 35-year old RPG programs unchanged using RPGIV. (Try running 1980′s vintage GWBASIC programs unchanged using VB. It likely will not be easy, perhaps not even possible.) Planned obsolescence is not implemented, as what seems to be true in the programs of Microsoft and other software producers. (And frankly, I believe IBM has done the right thing, purely on principle. Programming should be done to benefit those who pay for it to be done, not to entertain the programmer. Change the program if you need to improve or fix it, not just for the sake of change.)

RPG is being taught by very few schools; some community colleges have given up on their RPG-AS/400 courses due to lack of interest. Few new programmers are being educated. The RPG programming population is getting grayer and grayer. Though it can be used quite elegantly to produce powerful data-crunching programs, the young are not learning it. Crunching data is not entertaining. On RPG forums the topic of the future of RPG is argued quite violently; perhaps it will survive as long as people care about it. It would be a shame to see vast numbers of programs rewritten because people no longer care to use this highly functional language.

I find it difficult to believe computer science grads find it difficult to learn a language that I could learn in a very short time under less than ideal conditions. (I typed my first programs into the computer on 96-column punch cards and fed them into a card reader.) I have read opinions of obviously educated people who feel that the RPG logic cycle and the use of RPG “level break” handling (of processing when a designated field changes in value) is incredibly complex; I read about it in my RPG textbook, said “Hey – that’s pretty cool” and didn’t need to give it any further study. It is incomprehensible that these people find it difficult. Evidently, it’s sometimes easier to learn something when you know nothing about the topic than when you think you know something about it and your mind is halfway frozen shut.

I wish I had a solution; far wiser heads have yet to come up with a solid solution for the growing shortage of RPG programmers. But it would be such a waste if someone doesn’t.

 Guest Post – Curtis Barron