Blog post
Is COBOL still alive and kicking?
Get to know a member of the COBOL Working Group and a summer mentee university student in Part 3 of this video webinar seriesIn Part 3 of this video webinar series, COBOL Programming Course Technical Steering Committee (TSC) members chat with two special guests:
- Reg Harbeck, a member of the COBOL Working Group and a self-described "deep mainframe nerd"
- Sainath Rao, a student from IIT Roorkee (India) and Open Mainframe Project summer 2022 mentee
In the first part of this video webinar, Reg talks about the Open Mainframe Project COBOL Working Group, which was established to give people a solid understanding of COBOL and communicate its role in the world. Using engaging slides, he describes the COBOL Working Group's global survey, which was sent to a broad range of IT professionals to find out if COBOL still alive and kicking. The survey explored issues like:
- How big is the COBOL market today?
- What are the issues and concerns for the market?
- How are companies addressing those issues?
Reg shares many of the survey's findings in this webinar.
In addition, he shares an article he wrote that explores common misconceptions and insights from the survey.
The second part of the discussion focuses on Sainath, a mentee from the Summer Mentorship Program who helped update the COBOL Programming Course. He took the course and found that COBOL is a well-structured language that is easy to read and learn.
Sainath helped make improvements to the course by asking for more user input, adding chapters that focus on JSON and XML, and enhancing the user experience.
Two of the webinar's participants represent the next generation of COBOLers -- Sainath and TSC member Hartanto Widjaya, who is a student at Singapore Management University and Sainath's mentor. They both agree that a key facet of COBOL that differentiates it from other languages is that it’s easy to read and debug.
TSC members also discuss how COBOL works at the machine level -- for example, if a COBOL program is converted to Java, it won’t execute at machine level and thus won't be as fast as COBOL. COBOL is the computer language for business, the original rules-based engine that's unparalleled at performing financial mathematics on the mainframe.
When the COBOL Programming Course was released in 2020, it garnered more than 100,000 views in the first month! Whether you are a new or seasoned COBOLer, you'll want to check it out to see all the new changes!
Are you ready to start your COBOL journey? Dive into the COBOL Programming Course now!
The course is also available on the IBM Digital Learning Platform and Coursera.
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