> TPF evolved from the Airlines Control Program (ACP), a free package developed in the mid-1960s by IBM in association with major North American and European airlines. In 1979, IBM introduced TPF as a replacement for ACP — and as a priced software product.
Holy fuck. I don't want to be the poor guy maintaining code that is likely to be older than himself...
Disclaimer: I could be wrong about the number above, but afaik its in the ballpark.
"IBM designed the IMS with Rockwell and Caterpillar starting in 1966 for the Apollo program" "Vern Watts was IMS's chief architect for many years. Watts joined IBM in 1956 and worked at IBM's Silicon Valley development labs until his death on April 4, 2009. He had continuously worked on IMS since the 1960s." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Information_Management_Sys...
I've come across IMS before, and I absolutely love this line. This is a database built for the Apollo program by a tractor company. That's a kind of old-school solidity we don't see much anymore (mostly for the better, but still).
A lot of these systems definitely predate SQL. Even with SQL, using parameters is the usual way to operate on large amounts of data with fixed queries, and it avoids escaping issues entirely.
You're right there's ways to do this properly, of course. But in practise, with huge systems, people end up hooking in things here and there and forget at some point eh?