did anyone ever program in RPG?

[Don Shepherd]

When I graduated from high school in 1968 I attended a computer programming school called ECPI (Electronic Computer Programming Institute). In that year-long course we learned about IBM unit records equipment (which was being phased out by then) and three programming languages for the IBM 360: BAL (assembler), COBOL, and RPG (Report Program Generator). I then attended college for 4 years and got my BA and another year and got my MA, then I went to work as a programmer, writing FORTRAN programs for the Univac 1108. I eventually wrote COBOL and FORTRAN programs for the DEC-20 and VAX. I never actually programmed for the IBM 360.

I'm wondering if anyone here ever programmed in RPG. Of the three languages I studied in 1968 I remember RPG was my least favorite; assembler was my most favorite. You couldn't write an RPG program on just regular paper, it required about 4 or 5 specific types of coding forms as I recall. It was not a procedural programming language like FORTRAN and COBOL. I could see that it might be useful in certain simple file-processing applications, but looking back on all the programs I wrote in my career, I doubt that RPG would have been especially useful in any of them.

I think I consider RPG similar to HTML in that if you use them, you're not a "real" programmer.

Any thoughts?