COBOL isn’t exactly the hottest, trendiest programming language around, but it still runs legacy applications in use by thousands of companies. As part of its efforts to interest the next generation of programmers in the older language, application modernization vendor Micro Focus has announced a new COBOL coding contest.
Students and other amateur developers are invited to create a video game using Visual COBOL Personal Edition and submit it to the competition. The top winner will receive $1,000, an Apple iPad Mini and other prizes.
Michael Coughlan, Lecturer at University of Limerick commented, “COBOL supports 90 percent of Fortune 500 business systems and many organizations will continue to use it for decades to come. Students who wish to work in enterprise environments need a mixed skill-set, combining experience in modern programing languages with knowledge of enterprise applications written in older languages such as COBOL. Competitions like this help to encourage an interest in COBOL and allow enthusiastic students to gain experience with the language that may prove a useful differentiator when seeking employment in an increasingly competitive job market.”
