Questions about COBOL

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1. IS COBOL an active language?

2. If it is, is it worth learning?

3. Is there a compiler for Mac?

4. Is there a free complier for Mac?

Thanks in advance
 

rman


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I learned COBOL many thousands of years ago, along with fortran, fortran77, fortran90, PL/1, Ada, Pascal and C. I think you would be better of learning C, C++ or the likes.
 
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Some companies still program things in COBOL. My company for example is transitioning all their stuff to .Net etc., but they still support alot of COBOL things. Unfortunately there aren't enough competent COBOL programmers in the US so they get alot of their people contracted from India for that work.
 
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COBOL was and ancient language when I was in college, 15 years ago
If I had to learn a programing language now, I would choose JAVA
 

Roy


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hi there,

By now, you will have decided wether to learn cobol or not, but still, i'd like to throw in my opinion.

I have to study COBOL at my highschool
along with Java and some other languages that can be quite in handy.

It could be useful to learn Cobol, but not in the perspective of actually using it, but useful to be able to understand how back-end programming works. This 'rage' of object-oriented programming is indeed a great-opportunity language and it supports loads of features you can do with objects, methods, etc. I would though advise you (even though it isn't as pleasant as java) to take at least a look at these programs and the way they are built. It gives you another perspective of programming and it makes you capable of being an all-round programmer. COBOL is extremely old and yet it hasn't been thrown away completely. Instead a new branch has sprung, OO.

So, you'll have to decide for yourself, either you want to learn it and use it for some few cases or you don't. It's a choice of your own, but i think i gave you some arguments to think about actually learning it, it could broaden your view of programming.

I would also like to apologize for spelling mistakes and other grammatical errors you will have found in this text.
 
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This thread is way old. 2 years and one Month!
 
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Ugh. I called it Column Oriented Business Oriented Language. I hated having to remember and watch the count of what columns could and couldn't be used for coding. It also lacked easy variable control back when I learned it. C++ is a much better language to learn as it is similar to modern languages and is still more in use than cobol. With that said, if you want to learn cobol though knock yourself out. It will make you appreciate newer languages and their versatility.
 

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