Cobol - COBOL Newbie

Author

COBOL Newbie

Harbojam

2006-01-31, 7:55 am

Hey

Annybody know any good COBOL websites where i can practice writing
COBOL, preferably for begginers,

Many Thanks

J

John Culleton

2006-01-31, 6:55 pm

Harbojam wrote:

> Hey
>
> Annybody know any good COBOL websites where i can practice writing
> COBOL, preferably for begginers,
>
> Many Thanks
>
> J
No. You can find something if you search under "COBOL" and "tutorial" but
this will yield academic sites without much applicability in the real
world. Unfortunately many tutorials etc.on COBOL are written by academic
types whose major qualification is that they read some books on COBOL
written by other academics.

learn by doing. First you download and install something like TinyCobol or
Open Source COBOL. Then you get some good books on the subject from your
library system. What constitutes a good book depends on what your objective
is. Most COBOL jobs for beginners involve maintenance of existing programs,
and that means programs written in a very old fashioned style. I would
buy/borrow the books from Mike Murach and Associates. Modern books tend to
assume that all the latest bells and whistles have been employed. But if
you are looking for a COBOL job you need to start with the old stuff first.

The best resource you can employ is reading programs written by others, with
a manual or textbook at your side. A manual, even one for a variety of
COBOL you don't currently use, is very useful.

I learned from the famous "green books" from IBM but that was in 1968.I
doubt if they are available now, even on E-Bay. And they are just a tad out
of date...
--
John Culleton
Able Indexers and Typesetters

Howard Brazee

2006-01-31, 6:55 pm

On Tue, 31 Jan 2006 12:08:47 -0500, John Culleton
<john@wexfordpress.com> wrote:

>I learned from the famous "green books" from IBM but that was in 1968.I
>doubt if they are available now, even on E-Bay. And they are just a tad out
>of date...

I just threw mine away recently. Same edition. I still have my
green card though, much worse for wear.

Oliver Wong

2006-02-02, 6:55 pm

"Harbojam" <jamie_harbour@ntlworld.com> wrote in message
news:1138713770.445715.243090@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
> Hey
>
> Annybody know any good COBOL websites where i can practice writing
> COBOL, preferably for begginers,

John Culleton raises a good point. But for what it's worth, I went through
http://www.csis.ul.ie/COBOL/ to pick up the basics, and then
http://www.liant.us/download/pdf/rmlr_e01.pdf to get the details. Note that
my goal was not to maintain or edit the COBOL programs of others -- rather
it was just to understand the COBOL code being presented to me. Thus it was
more important that I be able to "read" than to "write".

- Oliver

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