The title is a reference to one of my favorite programming language instruction texts: Learn You a Haskell for Great Good. Funny, well-written and instructive. If you want to learn a functional language, Haskell is a fine choice. I still like writing in Scheme – another functional language that’s almost as old as Cobol.
But today’s topic is Cobol, which has been in the news lately, and which has a few programmers dusting off their old textbooks and manuals. If you want to learn Cobol or brush up on your old Cobol skills, I might be able to help. I developed an online class a few years ago to use for corporate training. Now I’ve decided to publish it for general use.
You can find it here: IBM Enterprise Cobol and as a link at the top of the home page. It was built with the idea of taking a beginner and turning them into a corporate programmer. If you have some mainframe skills already, you can skip some of the beginning lessons.
The course is divided into 5 units, and if you push hard, it’s possible to get through a unit each day – a week of corporate training. The course comes with an extensive collection of slides – 299 in all. There are 15 programming problems that you will need to tackle and complete if you are really wanting to learn something.
You can help me by reporting any problems you have with the site or with the material.
So, … I hope this will help you learn a Cobol for great good!
