Re: RPG V?

["James H. H. Lampert" <jamesl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hans Boldt wrote:
> Bob Cozzi wrote an article on what a fully free-form RPG V language
> might look like, based on rumors that IBM is working on such a thing. I
> have my opinions on the subject, and I'd be curious to know what others
> here might think.
>
> (See http://systeminetwork.com/article/what-rpg-v-might-look)
>
> What do I think?

I think such a language should be called SOMETHING OTHER THAN RPG.

When Kemeny and Kurtz devised a simplified, largely FORTRAN-derived 
language that dispensed with FORTRAN's column-based rules (and FORMAT 
statements, and so forth), they didn't call it FORTRAN/free; they called 
it BASIC. When Niklaus Wirth developed an ALGOL-based language to teach 
incorrigibles how to write structured code, he didn't call it ALGOL-ETH; 
he called it Pascal.

And of course, BCPL begat B, which begat C.

--
JHHL