cobol-programming-co VS perceptronCobol

https://github.com/openmainframeproject/cobol-programming-co...

Also, mainframes are really good at high throughput transactional jobs. That's why you see them in banks, transportation, insurance, etc. Big Tech™ doesn't see it as "cool" and are too focused on the Next Big Thing™, so there's not a lot of attention there. Sometimes, boring just gets the job done.

A great learning resource for COBOL is the Open Mainframe Project's COBOL Programming Course. The content is self-paced with labs and the best part is you get to do the labs on a real Mainframe.

Check it out: https://github.com/openmainframeproject/cobol-programming-co...

It's certainly not as straighforward as learning a more popular language and environment, but there are online resources if you look for them. A quick search yielded https://github.com/openmainframeproject/cobol-programming-co...

There appears to be an active community around it, and I'm sure getting help in an apprenticeship sort of way is possible. Again, we're talking about a niche language, so you can't expect the same level of accessibility as NodeJS or Go.

As for finding jobs, they're probably few and far between, but appear to be well paid from what I've heard. Places that need COBOL programmers will announce it, opportunities will likely come up from other contacts in the community, and cold contacting companies you know are using it is always an option.

I used to work in a bank with people that came from mainframes. They use to talk about Cobol and how it was a well paid job, cause of the lack of programmers.

As a way of learning the language I end up writing a perceptron in it [1]. It was a fun exercise.

1 - https://github.com/victorqribeiro/perceptronCobol

I don't know if this could be considered "learning" in the sense that you mean, but I chose code that I wrote in a familiar language and re-wrote it in Cobol. It was fun and I end up learning a lot.

https://github.com/victorqribeiro/perceptronCobol