Re: Proportion of programming languages on AS400

["Simon Coulter" <shc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello Booth,

Nothing in particular.  It just made me laugh.  If IBM had any RPG expertise 
you'd think the 
examples they provide in the manuals would be a little better than the 20 year 
old crap they 
do publish.  Hmmm?

While there MAY have been one or two very early IBM products written in RPG (I 
vaugely recall 
something on V1 using RPG), RPG is hardly qualified for systems programming.  
Systems were 
being written long before C came along (and C was first implemented in assembly 
until those 
two who shall remain nameless had enough to assemble a C compiler written in C 
-- an example 
of the proverbial bootstrap).  IBM used to do everything itself.  Its own 
hardware, software, 
compilers, etc, etc, but that has been changing over the last few years.

Most IBM development was done using macro assembly languages or some derivative 
of PL/1 (PL/X, 
PL/X86, PL/MI, PL/AS).  New development for the AS/400 is done mostly in C 
unless the existing 
code base is in PL/MI ('cause the bean counters think they get a greater return 
on their 
investment in bodies if they don't have to teach graduates a new language.  The 
argument goes 
something like this: They graduate knowing C don't they, and of course, their 
professors 
taught them to program rather than simply complete assignments, right?  So if 
we write code in 
C then our new hires will be productive from day one rather than spending some 
months with a 
mentor learning about PL/MI and the AS/400.  Pointy-haired bosses strike again!)

OS/400 and it's LPPs are written in many languages:  Query Management is 
written in Modula2 
(supplied by Logitech), Query Manager is written in PL/MI, except for the 
prompted editor 
which is C, SLIC is written in C++.  I believe there was even a Snobol compiler 
for the S/38 
which never saw the outside world.  Some screens use UIM, some are still DDS.

Regards,
Simon Coulter.

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//--- forwarded letter -------------------------------------------------------
> X-Mailer: Lotus Notes Release 5.0.1b September 30, 1999
> Date: Sun, 21 Nov 1999 14:23:24 -0500
> From: boothm@earth.goddard.edu
> To: MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com
> Reply-To: MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com
> Cc: none
> Subject: Proportion of programming languages on AS400

> 
> oh.  Glad to bring happiness to a curmudgeon.   Was any one part funnier 
> than the other parts?
> 
> I swear that I remember this from way back in the early 1970s.  What 
> language were they using then?  Isn't C and C++ much newer than the 1970s?
> 
> _______________________
> Booth Martin
> boothm@earth.goddard.edu
> http://www.spy.net/~booth

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