Where can i learn COBOL

Thor said:
"The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should therefore be regarded as a criminal offense."
E.W. Dijkstra in "How do we tell truths that might hurt?"
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COBOL does not have all the computer sciencey baggage that other languages have: - COBOL does not support object-oriented programming. - COBOL does not support closures. - COBOL is not a dynamic language. - COBOL supports functional programming roughly as much as C++ supports object-oriented programming. - COBOL does not support procedural recursion. - COBOL does not have a built-in support for regular expressions. You name it - COBOL doesn’t have it. So get rid of all the cruft, and you'll only have what you need to get the job done!

COBOL -- When code is harder to read than to write.
 
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A couple of years ago, I was braaiing with MortyMoose and he told me about this COBOL guyu. I am pretty sure we spoke about it again when Fanie, Baksteen and caR_Bom braaied with MM. The story is his to share but COBOL may be a huge asset elsewhere as well. Like further up (and I don't mean north).
 
Chinmaya said:
Contact me for mainframe Traing and I can tech you. Today infact I was thinking of deleting all my mainframe traing materials as i was thinking that in my lifetime I will not be working on this dead technology. The so called elephant from IBM will be difficult to throw off

The day I started working for a bank I was being told that application will sunset in few years. That was 2004. As of today the system still exists.
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If your COBOL is as delicious as your spelling, grammar and syntax, that bank is F'ed.
 
I also decide to take a look at Cobol a year ago. Start with an emulator "os/360 hercules emulator" and look for coding guides online as a start.

To get the emulator working start here( I got it working fairly easy on a Mac ):

https://www.tutorialspoint.com/cobol/cobol_environment_setup.htm
http://www.jaymoseley.com/hercules/starthere.htm
http://www.conmicro.com/hercos360/getstarted.html

IBM has been pushing Cobol leveraging Kubernetes in the IBM Cloud. Cobol is still going to be around for a while.
 
Drifter said:
Lot's of COBOL jobs out there. Face it, the mainframe will be around for a long time, and legacy skills are becoming very scarce. Youngsters have no interest in learning old tech.
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I'm curious, what's making them stick around? Why is whatever they're running not replaceable?
 
newby_investor said:
Technically it's replaceable but it would take time and manpower to do it. If it works, why replace? It's a business decision, a matter of economics.
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I can understand that, up to a point. But, unless I'm missing something, software written 30+ years ago can only be so complex? I'm almost tempted to learn COBOL and get one of these jobs to see how hard it would be to rebuild an application on something more modern...
 
koffiejunkie said:
I can understand that, up to a point. But, unless I'm missing something, software written 30+ years ago can only be so complex? I'm almost tempted to learn COBOL and get one of these jobs to see how hard it would be to rebuild an application on something more modern...
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COBOL was designed to be logical for the business types. I think if you're a seasoned developer then you might get frustrated at it.

It also makes some things fairly easy which would be complex with other languages. In the same way that its contemporary, Fortran, was designed to make mathematical calculations simpler

It's the time to redevelop the software but then also you'll need to run both systems in parallel until you're sure that the new one is qualified and stable. So there's that cost as well, don't forget.

I toyed with the idea of learning as well, and going for one of those jobs. Worked my way through a couple of chapters of the Microfocus book, got bored. Decided that time is better spent doing something I enjoyed...
 
koffiejunkie said:
I can understand that, up to a point. But, unless I'm missing something, software written 30+ years ago can only be so complex? I'm almost tempted to learn COBOL and get one of these jobs to see how hard it would be to rebuild an application on something more modern...
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the lack of specifications and the hidden technicalities as well as the risk a rewrite could incur sometimes makes it not worth while.
 
koffiejunkie said:
I'm curious, what's making them stick around? Why is whatever they're running not replaceable?
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Software written 30 years ago has 30 years worth of stability behind it. These pieces of software are often as close to “bugless” as you can get. Replacing something like this at the core of a huge business operation is a major risk, especially if it is working perfectly.

So much so that it seems that COBOL is coming back to life... huge strides in web availability etc. Very interesting actually.
 
Steamy Tom said:
the lack of specifications and the hidden technicalities as well as the risk a rewrite could incur sometimes makes it not worth while.
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Interesting that you should say that actually, because COBOL is structured so that the specifications sort of become part of the code.
 
Snigger all you want about modern languages but Cobol programmers earn big bucks because they are the lifeblood of any bank IT project. I have overheard of offers of R2M salaries with 4 day work weeks being seriously considered
 
Tim_vb said:
Snigger all you want about modern languages but Cobol programmers earn big bucks because they are the lifeblood of any bank IT project. I have overheard of offers of R2M salaries with 4 day work weeks being seriously considered
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A few years back, I was talking to a very well known tech company about interfacing with some of their services. I asked if they had a C++ API, and they had a fat laugh, and said "who uses C++ anymore?". The answer was - people who earn many times what they do. It's always about the value of the problem being solved, not the language.
 
newby_investor said:
Interesting that you should say that actually, because COBOL is structured so that the specifications sort of become part of the code.
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yes, but when rewriting it without clear specifications technicalities can be hidden?
 
cguy said:
A few years back, I was talking to a very well known tech company about interfacing with some of their services. I asked if they had a C++ API, and they had a fat laugh, and said "who uses C++ anymore?". The answer was - people who earn many times what they do. It's always about the value of the problem being solved, not the language.
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i use c++ everyday
 
koffiejunkie said:
I'm curious, what's making them stick around? Why is whatever they're running not replaceable?
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The mainframe is mainly used by large corporations that need to process huge volumes of data. Most COBOL is back end stuff (batch processing etc). Still the fastest and most efficient way to process volumes, especially if you have a good transactional database like ADABAS.
 
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Drifter said:
The mainframe is mainly used by large corporations that need to process huge volumes of data. Most COBOL is back end stuff (batch processing etc). Still the fastest and most efficient way to process volumes, especially if you have a good transactional database like ADABAS.
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As a (relatively young) COBOL Developer, that has experience in multiple languages, there is just nothing that can process the amount of data at the speed and stability that COBOL can. When I started working after Uni I thought cool let's rewrite this historic thing that is the back end of a bank. LOL was I wrong.
 
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