In 2020, Open Mainframe Project launched a COBOL Working Group that aims to address to promote and support the continued use of the COBOL language globally. We believe COBOL remains vibrant and viable, and a sound technology choice for future generations of core business and government applications.
One common question about COBOL is how much continues to play an active role in running the global economy. We want to answer that question and we need your help.
Please take this short survey, which is no more than a 5 minute task. If we get but with enough responses, we can learn how widely the COBOL success story has spread. The deadline to submit survey responses is April 23, 2021.
The COBOL Working Group aims to:
Raise awareness for COBOL’s importance and change the perception of it
Increase COBOL’s visibility and course work in the college curriculum
Close the technology skills gap and the path to a lucrative career in mainframes
For more about COBOL, check out these Open Mainframe Project resources:
The COBOL Training Course: A training program that educates those developers or students who would like to learn COBOL skills with Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code editor (VS Code) and extensions. These materials provide an overview of the language and real-life Enterprise COBOL demos to work on.
COBOL Training Course GitHub: https://github.com/openmainframeproject/cobol-programming-course
Calling all COBOL Programmers Forum: an Open Mainframe Project forum where developers and programmers who would like to volunteer or are available for hire can post their profiles. Whether they are actively looking for employment, retired skilled veterans, students who have successfully completed COBOL courses, or professionals wanting to volunteer, they can specify their level of expertise and availability to assist. Employers can then connect with these resources as needed.
https://community.openmainframeproject.org/c/calling-all-cobol-programmers/15
COBOL Technical Forum: a new forum specific to COBOL technical questions which will be monitored by experienced COBOL programmers. This will allow all levels of programmers to quickly learn new techniques and draw from a broad range of experience and expertise to address common questions and challenges arising during this unprecedented time. https://community.openmainframeproject.org/c/cobol-technical-questions/16.