

Ask YC: Does anyone know of any good Cobol tutorials? - cao825

Okay, well I am graduating from college as a Computer Science major and we were taught the usual C++, Java, etc... but obviously we never got much into the ancient languages. However, the job I got is part of a team converting a companies' applications from COBOL to Java. So, I would like to learn as much COBOL as possible in 2 weeks. Does anyone know of any good tutorials out there that can teach such an outdated language?  Note that I have googled for some and got some okay results, but nothing that looks particularly wonderful for learning business level COBOL.<p>Also, if anyone else has been in a similar situation, I would be very interested to hear about your experiences.<p>Thank you!
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wheels
I actually did know COBOL once upon a time. There was an organization called
"Business Professionals of America" that did a programming contest for kids in
High School. I can proudly say that in 1996 I was the 2nd best COBOL
programmer under 18 in Texas. ;-)

This is actually a very good book on COBOL, and the one that I used to learn
at the time:

<http://www.amazon.com/COBOL-80s-J-Wayne-Spence/dp/0314632905>

The hardest thing is getting your head around COBOL's basic structure as it
comes from a branch of the programming languages tree that died out long ago.
Good luck. :-)

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kirubakaran
Don't.

Sorry... Though your questions are different, I decided to tell you this
anyway. I've done similar work in the past and I certainly don't recommend it.
Please ask around (not the questions you are asking now) before going ahead
with this.

~~~
rms
Though it's not going to be personally fulfilling in the same way as modern
hacking, there's pretty good money to be made consulting on legacy systems.

~~~
kirubakaran
I'll quote you: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=178094>

:-)

~~~
rms
lol, yeah, this is the friend. To each his own.

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bigtoga
If you are going to take a job in which one of the requirements is migrating
COBOL apps, your skills will not transfer to a new job; you're just going to
waste your time learning a dead language. If you're just graduating, a huge
lesson to learn is that you should take jobs that, all else being equal, allow
you to advance your career. Ask yourself: "Is having COBOL on my resume going
to help me over the next 30 years?"

Life is long, you are young, and the decisions you make today affect the rest
of your life (perhaps more now than in five years).

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chaostheory
this isn't a tutorial, but this should help: <http://www.eclipse.org/cobol/>

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cooldude127
did you also post this on reddit? ;-)

~~~
cao825
Indeed ;)

Just trying to get a good sample, I guess... I have no real idea of the hell
on earth that I am walking into.

~~~
wanorris
One of the first pieces of great advice I got from my first real programming
mentor was to never learn COBOL, or someone will make you write it. :-)

After you learn first hand why no good hacker wants to write COBOL, you might
want to heed a related piece of advice: never _admit_ you can write COBOL to
anyone, for precisely the same reason. :-)

My condolences on your new job, but I hope you make good money and do
something fun with it.

------
christefano
<http://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/Kobol>

