What you'll learn
- COBOL language
- Learn the fundamentals of COBOL in about two hours.
- Get a free COBOL ebook
- No need to install any complex software
Course content
3 lectures • 20minWelcome
- Preview08:22
- Preview05:44
- 06:00COBOL Structure
4 lectures • 28minData
6 lectures • 57minCOBOL Program Flow
Requirements
- No prerequisites
Description
Yes, COBOL may seem like an obsolete language. But did you know the following...?
COBOL powers about 80% of in-person financial services transactions and 95% of ATM swipes.
On a daily basis, it processes $3 trillion in commerce.
There are over 220 billion lines of code and 1.5 billion are written each year.
In other words, COBOL is far from dead. If anything, the language appears to be poised for growth in the years ahead. Part of this is the need for digital transformation. After all, if companies want to leverage new technologies – such as machine learning and AI (Artificial Intelligence) – there will be a need to work with legacy software systems.
Oh, and by the way, there is already a labor shortage for COBOL programmers. Many Baby Boomers are retiring – so there is a need to replace them in the workforce.
But even the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need for COBOL. How so? Well, look at what happened in New Jersey recently. The state’s unemployment system was unable to handle the surge in claims. Because of this, the Governor created a TV commercial to hire COBOL programmers to fix the problem!
Now the good news about this language is that it was developed for non-technical people. So in this course, you will need to spend only a couple hours to learn the fundamentals. There will also be no need to install large amounts of software and frameworks on your computer. Instead, I’ll be working with an easy cloud-based cloud app.
Overview of the Course
My teaching philosophy comes from the Nike playbook: “Just do it!” So in this course, I will go through lots of interesting examples that you can code along with. But I will also show you how to learn by making errors!
In this course, we’ll:
See how to create the main structure for a COBOL language, such as with DIVISIONs, SECTIONs, PARAGRAPHs and so on.
Look at ways to debug your programming.
Use data types like strings and numbers.
See how to use loops and conditional logic.
Review the process of creating reports and working with files.
Are there any course requirements or prerequisites?
· There’s no programming experience required.
· There’s also no special software needed.
Who this course is for:
· Anyone who wants a great beginner’s guide for COBOL.
· Those who are looking for a change in their career or to enhance their existing career.
Who this course is for:
- Non-technical people who want to learn the COBOL language
Instructor
![Tom Taulli](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 64 64"%3E%3C/svg%3E){kind=avatar}
- 4.4 Instructor Rating
- 29 Reviews
- 126 Students
- 2 Courses
I’ve been in the tech industry for some time. While in the eighth grade, my dad bought me a computer and just left it on my desk. So I started to figure it out. And yes, I became obsessed with this machine. Then when I was a freshman in high school, I started to code and sold some of my programs to magazines (in the early 1980s, these publications had listings of code for readers to type in!) From all this, I knew I wanted to be a part of the tech world.
Although, it was not until college that I started my first business. You see, I was fairly bad at taking exams. What to do? Well, I created software for exam preparation. I would sell this to a national provider of bar exam preparation. The business would then go on to grow, as we added more and more exams.
But the biggest venture of mine was launched in 1997. It was Hypermart. Think of it as kind of a first-generation Shopify. From the start, the growth was strong and we would sell the company to InfoSpace.
In the meantime, I have always been writing, such as for Forbes (where I currently write a weekly column). I have also written a variety of books, with my latest being Artificial Intelligence Basics: A Non-Technical Introduction.
As of now, I’m an advisor to some awesome startups.