So, how does one begin this journey of learning COBOL today? Clearly, the process might not be all that simple.
Truth be told, with an abundance of free e-books available over the internet, the other obstacle involves finding an IDE that helps you master the basics.
One must understand that coding is only learned by doing and not just reading as it involves the application of that knowledge. In other words, you’d never be able to write a “Hello World!” COBOL program first without actually trying it out in an IDE first.
When one runs a quick search over the internet, we find three options that are well worth mentioning. First, Micro Focus offers a one-month free trial of their Visual COBOL Personal Edition.
You will also find websites like Tutorials Point that help newbie programmers to run code in the freely available COBOL online compiler. In fact, there’s a free one-year license for student developers to use the former, so as to help them build a career in COBOL programming.
This brings us to the most feasible option: the Open COBOL IDE, and which is based on the GNU COBOL compiler. Being simple to use, this IDE is free of cost for an indefinite period of time and can be downloaded over the internet. This is how the IDE looks, at first glance:
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