Are you an experienced COBOL programmer? Are you also interested in helping out agencies and employers in need of additional COBOL skills as they respond to public needs in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic? If yes, IBM has some interesting news for you! IBM, in association with the Linux Foundation’s Open Mainframe Project, has created three new initiatives to address the immediate and temporary need.

COBOL has been widely reported to have an estimated 220 billion lines of code being actively used today.

IBM has launched a new talent portal where employers can connect with available and experienced COBOL programmers. This new initiative provides an immediate way to help connect professionals where needs arise – with skilled talent ready to get to work.

Further, IBM has announced COBOL Technical Forum — a new temporary resource being actively monitored by experienced COBOL programmers providing free advice and expertise during the crisis. This tool will allow all levels of programmers to manage issues, learn new techniques and expedite solutions needed as programmers alter this critical code.

Another initiative called Open Source COBOL Training is a brand new open source course designed to teach COBOL to beginners and refresh experienced professionals. IBM worked with clients and an institute of higher education to develop an in-depth COBOL Programming with VSCode course that will be available next week on the public domain at no charge to anyone.

This curriculum will be made into a self-service video course with hands-on labs and tutorials available via Coursera and other learning platforms next month. The course will be available on IBM’s own training platform free of charge.