RPG on the mainframewhy never popular 812

There was a real requirement for those columns and appropriate placement. All of your paychecks were produced based on somebody being able to do this correctly. All businesses who pay people depend on this getting done correctly.

It wasn't supposed to be a procedural language, AFAICT. It was supposed to an easy interface between a non-computing expert and those invisible bits that formed data..IF it was retrieved correctly. The problems I saw (which was a long time ago and flitting) with RPG is that it was the rear end of all data processing. That meant that the user had to hand feed it. This was a PITA because sorting was not very efficient back then (absolutely not enough memory and-or disk space). COBOL allowed a process to keep running totals as it sorted through moby bit arrangements. The report section kept the boring formatting of forms out of the hair of the coder. You could buttign the formatting to somebody other than your bit god and have your bit god spend his-her time (and your money) on the real problems.

My one-ton penny dropped when somebody mentioned that RPG was the software replacement for the 407 board. That makes a lot of sense of what RPG didn't do.

BAH

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