New to COBOL

COBOL (Common Business-Oriented Language) was developed in 1959 and, since then, has been used as the basis for many business and government applications. Reports show that over 80% of the world's business applications run on COBOL with billions of lines of code written already and billions more being written annually.

Micro Focus has been the provider and market leader of distributed COBOL development tooling for over 40 years. Micro Focus's COBOL has evolved and today it differs significantly to the COBOL language of 1959, embracing object-orientation and enabling you to write code that takes full advantage of new operating systems and platforms such as Microsoft's .NET framework, .NET Core, and the Java Virtual Machine (JVM).

Where to start?

Micro Focus provides the following resources to help you get started with COBOL programming:

• A video-based training course in COBOL. The course teaches the fundamentals of the COBOL language, introduces the Micro Focus™ COBOL syntax, and usage of Micro Focus COBOL tools. The course is ideal for developers familiar with C, Java, or .NET who want to learn COBOL. It doesn't matter what language you know, as long as you have experience of standard programming concepts, this course is for you.

  The course uses the Micro Focus™ Learn COBOL extension for Microsoft Visual Studio Code. The extension includes the training materials and exercise programs for the course. For information about the COBOL course, and the Micro Focus™ Learn COBOL Extension, visit www.cobol.com.

• Other training courses - available from Support & Services on the Micro Focus Training Courses.
• Training videos on the Micro Focus Channel on YouTube.
• Explore the available demonstrations for examples of applications written in COBOL.

What next?

Micro Focus provides a variety of resources that illustrate how you can use COBOL to develop applications:

• Take COBOL Programming for Business Success, a web-based training course teaching you how to design and code COBOL programs.
• Refer to the 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 modern day technologies. JVM COBOL is COBOL with extensions to support the Java Virtual Machine (JVM). It offers support for object orientation and access to the JVM. For more see:
  • Check Procedural COBOL Compared with JVM COBOL which covers introductory information about the COBOL language including the difference between native and JVM COBOL code.
  • Introduction to Object-Oriented Programming for COBOL Developers
  • Visual COBOL - A Developer's Guide to Modern COBOL - in PDF format, available from the Micro Focus Web site.
  • JVM COBOL Reference
  • Comparison of COBOL with Other Managed Languages