Subj : Re: COBOL for Beginners
To : Dr. What
From : smartyhall
Date : Sat Dec 07 2019 04:13 am
Re: Re: COBOL for Beginners
By: Dr. What to smartyhall on Fri Dec 06 2019 06:14 pm
> -=> smartyhall wrote to All <=-
>
> sm> I know a lot of people would take this as a farcical question, but I
> sm> really am this crazy. :-P
>
> sm> I'm looking for a good place to start learning COBOL.
>
> Ya, you're crazy. 8)
>
> COBOL is on the out and pretty much only on Mainframes (even then, there's
> not much active development - primarily maintenance).
>
> But if you really want to spend some time with it, there's GnuCOBOL,
> NetCOBOL for .Net, and probably more.
>
> I built an RC2014 (a Z80 based retrocomputer running CP/M 2.2) and I was
> able to locate a COBOL compiler on one of the software archives.
>
> So a quick Google search should let you find what you need.
I actually have a fondness for maintaining arcane and forgotten infrastructure, especially when the threat of imminent doom looms behind every mistake. I think that comes from all the time I've spent working in live video production in studios that had gone through one too many engineers that didn't ever take the time to clean up the spaghetti of cables and converters that tends to accrete in such environments.
CP/M is an OS I haven't thought of in ages! Maybe I should just dust off a vintage computer from my collection and try retro COBOL. I never have spent that much time with CP/M, and I could do with learning more about pip. :-P
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