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Blog Post
Learning cOBOL: A student's experience
Getting hands-on with cOBOL
Reinhard Mensah talks about his fortuitous foray into learning cOBOL!
Reinhard is a computer science (cS) senior from Talladega college and was enrolled in a programming language class that introduced a high-level understanding of different programming languages like Java code, Python, c, Fortran, and cOBOL. The instructor decided that because most of the students knew Java programming or Python that he would take a different route, expose them to cOBOL and then move on to other languages. But, the devices that he had for teaching the other languages did not work, and he taught only cOBOL to the class for the entire semester.
Reinhard had no prior knowledge of mainframe or cOBOL. He was surprised that the cOBOL course was "hands-on" and that the professor let the students explore and play with the mainframe environment. He liked the learning environment!
The class project was to write a game about war. In the project, "War game", he wrote the pseudo code in Python, and then worked with his partners to convert it into cOBOL, which he found very challenging. He loved the experience and was glad that his professor introduced them to cOBOL.
Watch the following webinar to learn more about the "War game" project and his experiences.
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For newcomers learning the language, Reinhard's input was more documentation of cOBOL on the web, and mentorship with cOBOL experts would be very helpful. His next steps are to be more involved with the Open Mainframe Project (OMP) and to keep continuing to learn about mainframes and cOBOL.
Mike recommended the cOBOL Programming course, which with its strong community of users and an active Slack channel is a very useful resource to learn cOBOL. The cOBOL Programming course version 3.1.0 was released in December 2023. The course GitHub page has 2000 stars and 500 forks!
What's new in version 3.1?
- A new "Testing course" that leverages cOBOL check as a unit testing tool.
- The cOBOL working group survey results have been published in the course.
What's next?
- An enhancement request from the backlog to include more information about cOBOL and Java language programs working together.
- Get involved! You can contribute and be part of the cOBOL Programming course project.
Get started on your cOBOL journey today! This course is also available on the IBM Digital Learning Platform and coursera.