Professor Tak Auyeung of American River College, said it beautifully, “A programming language is not a fashion statement” it is used for a purpose. Whether it is to add new features, modify logic, create APIs to integrate it into other applications, or implement modern development practices, businesses around the world need application developers who know COBOL. This course introduces Enterprise COBOL programming on IBM Z using Visual Studio Code and modern development tools. Learners build a solid foundation in COBOL program structure, data definitions, arithmetic processing, conditional logic, file handling, and intrinsic functions. The course also introduces real-world practices such as program compilation, debugging, ABEND analysis, performance-aware coding, unit testing, and basic CI/CD concepts. Hands-on labs reinforce learning through practical problem-solving and testing exercises. On successful completion of this course, learners are eligible to earn the COBOL Programming with VSCode badge.
DK
The course gives a reasonably good introduction to the COBOL programming language. But it did not actually get learners to write a complete COBOL program. Would that be asking too much?
WH
Excellent use of platform and outstanding material for presentation and understanding. I also very much enjoyed the quircky-ness of the presenter and his humour.Thank you very much!
LL
This was a great refresher for my COBOL skills. The only thing I would suggest is a bit more practice writing some code.
RG
It was a good course and covered many fundamental concepts as well as giving hands on experience using Visual Studio and the mainframe.
BM
excellent course, great content and great labs to work along too.
FG
I liked this course, very important for my develop profesional.
BW
I love the hands-on approach to this course and the whole process made learning very digestible and interactive! I can't wait to finish my other IBM course!
JC
Very easy to follow.Very informative.Great tools. Jeff Bisti is my personal favorite instructor in Coursera.
HL
The tutor / presenter made a dry and hard-to-convey topic much more fun to learn. Thanks for the refresher Coursera and IBM.
SS
Simple, straight forward, and I benefitted greatly! Thank you so much.
JR
Very good course for starting with COBOL or remove the dust and remind just is my case. Videos long enough. Quizzes agree with content. Labs could be a little more demanding. Thanks a lot.
AF
Very interesting course with both theory & practice. It is a good starting point to get your hand dirty with COBOL.
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The course gives a reasonably good introduction to the COBOL programming language. But it did not actually get learners to write a complete COBOL program. Would that be asking too much?
It would be nice to have direct access to mainframe instead of going to a different site and have to follow all these other instructions.
I would say that this course offers a very nice simple introduction to some basic COBOL. On the negative side, we are presented with basic code and asked to identify problems, without developing our own code, neither from scratch nor full snippets of code. Especially old programming languages have their quirks that would make more practice ideal. Still, overall I would consider this course nevertheless very enjoyable and useful for a simple introduction to the topic. (I'd prefer to give it 4.5 stars, but that is not an option.)
It would be nice to cover Labs with videos
Thought that this was a great course, with well put together material. As someone who was 100% new to COBOL, this felt like it provided a good overview of both using Zowe with Visual Studio Code, and the COBOL language itself. Lectures were short, entertaining, and rich in content, while the labs were rigorous enough to further familiarize with the lecture and quizzes.
This is a great course for building your base foundation in COBOL. The only way to go now is UP!
ACCESSIBLE AND FUN INTRO TO COBOL, FIRST TIME WORKING ON A MAINFRAME
Good start, but seemed to jump around quite a bit and the labs were very basic.
very very simplified and shallow
There is missing data, I couldn't get zowe to work
can't unenroll
Great course! The setup is the hardest part and needs work for the instructions to be smooth and polished. (Apparently, the instructions were not "user tested.") The actual programming work is very simple in comparison. Probably needs more coding exercises, but for a start -- it's not bad. Videos: GREAT! Jeff Bisti and his video team do a super job with the videos and I like Jeff's style, his delivery, and his sense of humor. The course instructions need to be AS CLEAR AS Jeff in his videos, and they are WAY not that. Still, the course is inspiring, so -- 5 stars. Way to go, y'all!
I Enjoy the course content, the way that has been delivered and of course Jeff. I found him on a Youtube video talking about Cobol and then found again in IBM Mainframe Friday Coding and I got intrigued once he said that there was training session going on Coursera and Immdiately enrolled and I love it!
Sandra Viviana Paiz Argentina:
Quiero expresar que al haber completado COBOL. Me resulto muy interesante y practico para aplicarlo en futuro en una empresa. Gracias Cousera y al profesor a cargo de dictar el cursado.
I really liked the course, for the sequence in approaching the subjects, but mainly for the update of Enterprise COBOL for z/OS, which is quite different from previous versions, notably the "Functions", which is very cool.
Another great course from IBM with Jeff Bisti as the instructor. He did a fantastic job explaining the COBOL concepts and the labs were very engaging as well as informative. I look forward to more mainframe courses!
Muy útil el curso para entender los fundamentos del lenguaje. Es una pena que no puedas concluir el curso sin pagar el certificado, cuando los mismo creadores diseñaron el curso de forma gratuita.
Very good course for starting with COBOL or remove the dust and remind just is my case. Videos long enough. Quizzes agree with content. Labs could be a little more demanding. Thanks a lot.
I have been programming on COBOL language many years, 11 years :), but I don´t found many courses about that, for that I am currenly in this and other courses now :) Thank you for sharing.
Excellent use of platform and outstanding material for presentation and understanding. I also very much enjoyed the quircky-ness of the presenter and his humour.
Thank you very much!