COBOL

There are 4 posts filed in COBOL (this is page 1 of 1).

More COBOL resources

I recently came across this post which discussed adding COBOL to a function as a service (FAAS). It linked to several articles from 2020 that I also noticed back then. Here are some other COBOL resources mentioned in the post:

  • Open Mainframe Project – The Open Mainframe Project was founded in 2015, as a focal point for deployment and use of Linux and Open Source in a mainframe computing environment.
  • COBOL Programming Course – Created by IBM and contributed to the Open Mainframe Project
  • FreeCodeCamp – Video that accompanies the course above (August 2020, 116K views – wow!) (1.5 hr)
  • YouTube – How to practice COBOL programming (15 min)
  • YouTube – Learn COBOL in One Video (2.5 hr)

Bookmarked The Code That Controls Your Money (wealthsimple.com)
Another in a series of articles I have seen about COBOL, definitely includes some nice history and examples of current use of COBOL in the US financial industry.

Is there still hope for COBOL programmers?

Recently, Joseph Steinberg noted  that the governor of New Jersey put out a call for COBOL programmers to assist in updating or fixing business applications being used by the state for unemployment applications. I last wrote about this in June 2019 , after seeing an article about COBOL expertise being still in demand by financial institutions. I decided to look and see if there were any resources available for someone to get familiar with COBOL. It turns out that Micro Force is a company that has up-to-date COBOL development environments and compilers, OpenSource.com lists several compilers available (gnuCOBOL seems to be the significant one (documentation here)), and there is a beginning COBOL programming book available from Apress. Looks like there may be some opportunity here (at least according to Indeed.com ….).