COBOL has been quietly running the world’s most critical systems for over six decades, processing an estimated 95 percent of ATM transactions and 80 percent of in-person financial exchanges every single day. Despite being one of the oldest programming languages still in active use, the demand for COBOL developers has never been higher — and the supply has never been thinner. If you have ever wanted to learn a language that directly impacts billions of dollars in daily commerce and is practically synonymous with job security, this is your starting point.
This course takes you from writing your very first COBOL program all the way through advanced data handling and program organization techniques. You will begin with the fundamentals — the column layout, the four-division structure, DISPLAY output, and comments — then move into declaring and manipulating data using PIC clauses, level numbers, arithmetic verbs, and edited pictures for formatted output.
From there, you will master control flow with IF statements, EVALUATE branching, PERFORM loops, compound conditions, and COBOL’s unique level 88 condition names. The course then dives into string manipulation with STRING, UNSTRING, and INSPECT, builds up your understanding of tables using OCCURS and nested subscripts, and finishes with professional techniques like paragraph-based organization, REDEFINES, copybooks, scope terminators, and decimal precision handling.
