cobol_to_elixir VS cobol-programming-co

as an outsider (and thus potentially ignorant of pitfalls): I'm a big fan of the strategy to add transpilers to modern languages so that we can start writing new code in them, have them output COBOL, and then eventually have enough of the codebase written in the new lang to swap over to it instead.

I'm thinking of the Elixir->COBOL like this: https://github.com/TheFirstAvenger/cobol_to_elixir

Was speaking with the author about a year ago and he was having really good success with it.

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.