Cobol programs, compile and execute.

Hello,

I guess the answer depends on what you plan to do with the programs. If you are just interested in learning the Visual COBOL product then you can download the Visual COBOL Personal Edition from Rocket® Visual COBOL® Personal Edition (formerly a Micro Focus® product) | Rocket® Software

This will allow you to develop COBOL applications from within either the Visual Studio or Eclipse IDE’s.

If you prefer to use Visual Studio Code then there is a Rocket COBOL extension that you can install. Please see the documentation Product Overview

Neither of these products allows you to create programs for production use though. You would need a full Visual COBOL product license in order to distribute your applications. You would need to contact Rocket Sales for that.

Thanks.

As a former mainframe COBOL programmer and current Visual COBOL programmer, I should advise you that you have several avenues to explore.  Some of the choices have to do with which platform you would like to use.  Visual COBOL produces programs that work very well on the Microsoft platform and allow you to make very good use of the Microsoft classes.  However, Rocket COBOL produces programs that run on a variety of platforms, but some features are specific to the platform.  If you would like to “restart” on IBM mainframes, that is a different avenue than developing for other platforms.

I am in the same situation as NI and would welcome feedback on Rocket COBOL and IBM alternative. Thank you.