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:

  • An introductory course to COBOL programming, Visual COBOL: Modern COBOL for the Next Generation.

    This course is the ideal first step on your journey to learning about the COBOL language and how to take advantage of what Enterprise Developer can do for you. After taking the course you will have a good knowledge of the basics of COBOL and Enterprise Developer, and will be ready to build on that general knowledge by learning more about taking full advantage of Enterprise Developer to meet the specific requirements of your applications.

    The course is available from a link in your Electronic Delivery Receipt email which you were sent with details about your license. Follow the link and click the Documentation tab.

    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 Micro Focus 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 Micro Focus Channel on YouTube.

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. .NET COBOL is COBOL with extensions to support the .NET Framework. It offers support for object orientation and access to the available Java class libraries or the .NET CLR. See:

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