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I won't say yes or no, but here is my experience: Once you know a few programming languages, learning an extra is really easy. And COBOL is among the more eas

I won't say yes or no, but here is my experience: Once you know a few programming languages, learning an extra is really easy. And COBOL is among the more easy. It is good to start with a reasonably designed mainstream language like Python, Java, C#, Go,... and learn to think like a programmer. Then pick a few weirdos like lisp, prolog, haskell, and learn what languages can provide if stretched. COBOL, Basic, PHP,... are today less well designed language that will teach you bad habits. As a first language, you'll have to unlearn things to grow. Cobol programmers tend to be less paid and work slowly with gnarly code bases. By definition, you work for businesses that are bureaucratic and slow in changing anything. Your colleagues will be near pension age. Do you want this company culture? You will have work forca long time, of course. Users already know you'll answer that lots of their questions are impossible. It's easy to say no to them when they e.g. request a strange UI change. Being a (human) translator between cobol and the rest of the company is a nice path to architect. It's rare to find a programmer talking to both sides of the IT world. Cobol itself isn't the biggest problem. Even the mainframe isn't. But everything else will be bespoke to the company, underdocumented, hard to learn. That may include the text editor you use.

hosuew 2y ago
> reasonably designed mainstream language like Python I think python is an excellent "first" programming language, but I'd resist calling it "reasonably designed"; especially when holding it up as more reasonably designed than the likes of lisp or haskell. As a programmer who was forced out of the education pipeline due to the courses being taught exclusively in C++, and forcing OOP to the point that my natural propensity toward immutable functional programming was consistently reprimanded as "programming wrong", that my first programming language became Bash as it was what I could use to automate my Linux box. I later picked up Python, to do mathematics, that eventually led me back into the profession of programming. > weirdos like lisp [...] haskell Years later I discovered Clojure and Haskell which validated my original love of immutability and functional programming making those languages feel like the most "reasonably designed" and sensible languages. Like being wrapped in a warm blanket.
Genius_um 2y ago
Thank you for your response. Actually, I don't really intend to pursue a professional career in COBOL; it was more of an excuse to learn a new, rather old language that interested me, just like many other programming languages I’d like to explore. However, it was still interesting to know what would await me if one day, on a whim, I developed a deep passion for this particular language. COBOL is still a part of computing history, and it’s only fair to draw knowledge from it.
- hyperman1 2y ago
  What could anybody have against learning something new. Follow your hearth and go build something! I've heard of someone implementing tetris in labview, which is completely against its purpose and was loved by everyone who saw it.

hosuew 2y ago

> reasonably designed mainstream language like Python I think python is an excellent "first" programming language, but I'd resist calling it "reasonably designed"; especially when holding it up as more reasonably designed than the likes of lisp or haskell. As a programmer who was forced out of the education pipeline due to the courses being taught exclusively in C++, and forcing OOP to the point that my natural propensity toward immutable functional programming was consistently reprimanded as "programming wrong", that my first programming language became Bash as it was what I could use to automate my Linux box. I later picked up Python, to do mathematics, that eventually led me back into the profession of programming. > weirdos like lisp [...] haskell Years later I discovered Clojure and Haskell which validated my original love of immutability and functional programming making those languages feel like the most "reasonably designed" and sensible languages. Like being wrapped in a warm blanket.

Genius_um 2y ago

Thank you for your response. Actually, I don't really intend to pursue a professional career in COBOL; it was more of an excuse to learn a new, rather old language that interested me, just like many other programming languages I’d like to explore. However, it was still interesting to know what would await me if one day, on a whim, I developed a deep passion for this particular language. COBOL is still a part of computing history, and it’s only fair to draw knowledge from it.

hyperman1 2y ago
What could anybody have against learning something new. Follow your hearth and go build something! I've heard of someone implementing tetris in labview, which is completely against its purpose and was loved by everyone who saw it.