Learning How to Program in COBOL

Learn

Micro Focus provides a wide range of resources to help you get started with the basics of the language:

• A video-based training course in COBOL. The course teaches the fundamentals of the COBOL language, introduces the Micro Focus COBOL syntax, and usage of Micro Focus COBOL tools. The course is ideal for developers familiar with C, Java, or .NET who want to learn COBOL. It doesn't matter what language you know, as long as you have experience of standard programming concepts, this course is for you.

  The course uses the Micro Focus Learn COBOL extension for Microsoft Visual Studio Code. The extension includes the training materials and exercise programs for the course. For information about the COBOL course, and the Micro Focus Learn COBOL Extension, visit www.cobol.com.

  Although the course uses Visual COBOL to demonstrate the programming concepts, all of the information in the course applies equally to Enterprise Developer.

  This is a standard COBOL programming course. It does not include instructions about how to create applications that use Mainframe Subsystem Support (such as CICS, IMS, JCL and PL/I).

• Other training courses - available from Support & Services on the OpenText Training Courses.
• Developing Applications in this product help - provides details about how to create projects, build, debug and run in the IDE.
• Training videos on the OpenText YouTube Channel for Micro Focus Products.

Practice

Work through the tutorials in this product Help. It includes a basic tutorial showing you how to create your First Hello COBOL World Application and other more advanced tutorials showing how to use various programming techniques.

Explore

Find more information on various aspects of COBOL programming in the rest of this section.

Also, explore our detailed COBOL Language Reference for in-depth information about the syntax and the usage of the COBOL language.

Explore the power of COBOL to prepare your applications for interaction with the latest technologies. JVM COBOL is COBOL with extensions to support the JVM. It offers support for object orientation and access to the available Java class libraries or the .NET CLR. See:

• Introduction to Object-Oriented Programming for COBOL Developers
• Visual COBOL - A Developer's Guide to Modern COBOL - in PDF format, available from the Micro Focus Web site.

For more, see the resources available in the Related Information.