The curiosity got the better of me when +Slashdot +reported that New Jersey was desperately looking for +COBOL programmers, +and a few days later it was reported that +IBM +tried to locate COBOL programmers.
+ +I thus decided to have a look at free software alternatives to +learn COBOL, and had the pleasure to find +GnuCOBOL was +already in +Debian. It used to be called Open Cobol, and is a "compiler" +transforming COBOL code to C or C++ before giving it to GCC or Visual +Studio to build binaries.
+ +I managed to get in touch with upstream, and was impressed with the +quick response, and also was happy to see a new Debian maintainer +taking over when the original one recently asked to be replaced. A +new Debian upload was done as recently as yesterday.
+ +Using the Debian package, I was able to follow a simple COBOL +introduction and make and run simple COBOL programs. It was fun to +learn a new programming language. If you want to test for yourself, +the GnuCOBOL Wikipedia +page have a few simple examples to get you startet.
+ +As I do not have much experience with COBOL, I do not know how +standard compliant it is, but it claim to pass most tests from COBOL +test suite, which sound good to me. It is nice to know it is possible +to learn COBOL using software without any usage restrictions, and I am +very happy such nice free software project as this is available. If +you as me is curious about COBOL, check it out.
+ +As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my +activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address +15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b.
+ +