IBM will provide free training in COBOL to help mobilize programmers during the crisis of the COVID-19

At the beginning of this month of April we learned about the desperate search for programmers COBOL that were being conducted in some states of the united States. The reason: their systems of social security for the unemployed using this programming language which dates back to the 50’s and there are no staff trained to deal with the failures that are showing up.

The issue is not a problem in COBOL as such, it is years ago virtually no one is studyingbecause is a language as old and unattractive that ceased to be taught in schools despite the fact that continues to be present in lots of critical infrastructures throughout the world. Hence, companies like IBM are taking advantage of the opportunity to offer some resources.

Free courses through Coursera and forums for developers who are looking for work

The company is designing a new course open-source to teach COBOL to beginners. The program it was designed with IBM clients and an institution of higher education to offer training COBOL high-level using VSCode.

This course will be available this week through Coursera, with videos, labs, and materials completely free of charge and in the public domain. Also will the course be offered through the platform of training of IBM.

In addition to this, the company announced the creation of a portal to connect programmers COBOL with potential employers, so that the retired veterans, volunteers, or any student who has completed the courses of COBOL they can find work, or ways to collaborate.

And, next to this a technical forum in that programmers experienced in COBOL will be offering free advice during the crisis of the COVID-19.

The Open Mainframe Project

But IBM is not the only company that will be offering resources on COBOL for help during the pandemic. Thanks to the Open Mainframe Projecta program of the Linux Foundation and the same IBM, also counted with the collaboration of companies such as Broadcom, Phoenix Software, Rocket Software, SUSE, Vicom Infinity, and Zoss Team will also be collaborating.

For example, SUSE is offering a free subscription to a year of the version for developers SUSE Linxu Enterprise Serverhighlighting its wide variety of packages for COBOL.

More information | Open Mainframe Project

–
The news

IBM will provide free training in COBOL to help mobilize programmers during the crisis of the COVID-19

it was originally published in

Engadget

by
Gabriela Gonzalez

.