IBM Launches New COBOL Training Initiative

[Massimo Gnerucci]

(04-14-2020 10:33 PM)toml_12953 Wrote:  

(04-14-2020 06:03 PM)rprosperi Wrote:  IBM Launches New COBOL Training Initiative

In High School in the early 70's, we had access to a PDP-8 via 110-baud dial-up link to a neighboring town's private/exclusive school system, on which we able to use FOCAL, BASIC, FORTRAN and COBOL. The instructor demonstrated to us that a working COBOL program could be caused to generate 3+ pages(!) of error messages during the compile phase by simply misplacing a single period.

When asked 'Why then would one want to learn COBOL?' he replied 'To be sure you can always get a programming job!' He emphasized, somewhat prophetically, that 'there will always be a demand for COBOL programmers, for at least 50 years.' I sure would like to be able to track him down today to show him this article.

There's a great, free COBOL compiler available. It's full COBOL unlike many microcomputer COBOLs that leave out SORT/MERGE and ISAM.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/open-cobol/

Now known as GnuCOBOL. Very good.

But I also set up a complete IBM OS/VS environment in a Hercules' virtual machine.