In the past, I suffered through a course on COBOL in order to get a grade. Some people have suggested that, although nasty, this language still has a lot of relevance in the job market. My question:
Thanks
COBOL still has a niche market 30 years on and millions of lines of code run every day in such sectors as the insurance industry.
From my experience, if you know COBOL you can easily get a job but the downside is that you can only move within a small circle. If you don't like the insurance industry e.g. you probably won't want to move to another, better paid job in that sector.
You'd have to move out.
There is an open-source COBOL compiler called OpenCOBOL which you could use.
And a COBOL Portal if you want to brush-up.
If you like COBOL then I would say it is worth it. As other answers have said, there are billions of lines of COBOL still out there, and it doesn't seem to be dying down anytime soon. If you get lucky you could end up making good money because a lot of other developers don't want to use it.
OpenCOBOL is a good COBOL compiler to use.
Only if you want to have some boring job in a bank supporting and developing some 40-year old application. But basically it is a horrible, horrible language (I tell from experience) and if you want to still like programming, it is NOT worth it. Well, actually there isn't much to keep up to, the standard hasn't changed in years (OK, granted the vendors of COBOL compilers, Fujitsu and IBM are adding some feature of their own into the language such as XML processing). But in general it is not a very complex language, so a good programmer can get to speed in a day, and a decent programmer within a week. It's not LISP or anthing, you know :D As to the billions lines of code - it is true, but it is also true that NO new application is developed from scratch in COBOL.
OpenCobol is OK, also you can download a copy of netcobol from fujitsu.
And to sum up with a nice puchline from one of my friends:
Being a COBOL specialist is a lot like being a lion tamer. Sure, you can earn a lot of money, but the next place that you can work at is in Mozambique.
So if all that is true, isn't it strange that Cobol: 1) is the most widely used language in the 21st century; 2) is critical to some of the hottest areas of software development today; and 3) may be the next language you'll be learning?
I've learned a bunch of languages and technologies over the years, in addition to Cobol - basic, pascal, fortran, RPG III, VB, MS Access, Java, Perl, C, C++, BAL, ASP, JSP, PHP, CSS, Ajax, JavaScript, d/html, SQL, Unix shell, even a language called MIX (Knuth Assembler).
The one thing that stand out about COBOL is what a boring, dull language it is. Having said that, it saved my bacon twice when I was out of work, once in 1986 and once in 2002. I don't put it on my resume now, but it can be a life-saver when you're in trouble.
MicroFocus COBOL is the compiler you should use to keep your skills sharp.