Is Learning COBOL Easy? Just Because it is Written in English?

COBOL has been able to adapt to change: each new enterprise platform that emerges has had COBOL applications deployed there

Learning COBOL isn't like learning a completely new language: it's English! It consists of English-like structural components such as verbs, clauses, and sentences. Its readability means that you can understand what a program is doing without having to learn a whole new syntax. COBOL has been ported to virtually every hardware platform. Programs written in this "write once, run anywhere" language enables businesses to reuse COBOL applications that were written decades ago on new platforms like .NET or JVM. The language itself is portable with data types and structures which enable developers to write applications that can be ported to new platforms with minimal or no change. COBOL has been able to adapt to change: each new enterprise platform that emerges has had COBOL applications deployed there.

What is COBOL (Common Business Oriented Language)?

COBOL an acronym for Common Business Oriented Language is a computer programming language, which was designed for business use. COBOL was procedural in the beginning, but since 2002, COBOL became object-oriented. COBOL was developed by the Conference of Data System Languages (CODASYL).

COBOL is primarily used in business, finance, and administrative systems for companies and governments. COBOL is still widely used in applications that are based on mainframe computers like transaction processing jobs. But nowadays, due to the retirement of experienced COBOL programmers, new programmers are shifting to different platforms, which are written in modern languages.

Why COBOL is a good option for developers:

Cobol Programmers mainly work for corporate businesses, since about 80% of business apps run on COBOL. There is a growing corporate need for skilled programmers to support and maintain critical COBOL systems. These programmers in the US commonly hold degrees in Computer Science, Computer Systems Security, and Management Information Systems. COBOL-related jobs don't demand a lot of specialized education, with 83.8 percent of the jobs asking for a bachelor's degree.

There is more than meets the eye when it comes to being a Cobol Programmer. There are certain skills that many Cobol Programmers have to accomplish their responsibilities. No COBOL-related job wants applicants to only know COBOL. Here are some of the top skills that crop up alongside COBOL in these job postings. These are COBOL, JCL, SQL, CICS, Java, Software Development, VSAM, Oracle, and Project Management.

Micro Focus, a company that writes plenty of COBOL code, sponsored a survey run by Vanson Bourne. To meet the need for more modern COBOL developers, Micro Focus created a free academic program to help educators teach this valuable skill and equip students to learn the ins and outs of COBOL within the familiar surroundings of a modern IDE such as Visual Studio or Eclipse.

Micro Focus has more than 40 years of COBOL experience, servicing more than 15,000 customers and over a million licensed users with its technology. The Micro Focus COBOL Academic program currently supports over 400 global academic partners with a focus on creating greater engagement between educators, students, and the business community.

The COBOL language running today is very different from the one programmer encoded in punch cards. Many popular platforms don't do a good job of ensuring that code continues to run longer than a few years. The COBOL community is devoted to avoiding this kind of problem. Right now, there are more active lines of application code written in COBOL than in any other programming language. The average Cobol Programmer in the United States earns a yearly salary of $85,000. In India, it's ₹49,761 per month.