[PLUG] COBOL again

[JP Vossen <jp@jpsdomain.org>]

We've talked about this a few times, especially after one of Walt's 
COBOL talks: 
https://developers.slashdot.org/story/18/09/25/1759250/do-you-know-cobol-if-so-there-might-be-a-job-for-you

I just started wondering about this though, just because the language is 
Cobol doesn't mean modern techniques can't be used.  Can you do this 
remote?  Is the code in Git?  Can there be unit tests, CI, and all of 
that good stuff?  COBOL linters?

Wow:
* https://github.com/tollofsen/linter-cobc
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tools_for_static_code_analysis

What Cobol is even used?  The Mint repos have "Open COBOL" but that 
"translates COBOL into C and compiles the translated code using GCC" 
which feels like cheating.  Presumably production is IBM COBOL or 
related, so I wonder how close the two are.  I'm gonna go out on a limb 
and say that a Linux test/dev system would be a tad cheaper than a 
Z-series...

Huh, it doesn't seem like there are a lot of options: 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_compilers#COBOL_compilers

There are lots of books on Amazon (including, seriously, _COBOL for 
Dummies_) but many seem out of print or insanely expensive (or both).

Has anyone done this or checked the job boards for COBOL?

Just random musings...
JP
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