Felienne Hermans, Professor of Computer Science Education at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
Almost all of the COBOL experts in The Netherlands are pensioned. We have not raised a new generation, evidently. So is it time to throw out our COBOL code? No there are still better alternatives. Instead of such a huge disinvestment, we can use new insights in Programming Education to teach a much more diverse and much broader population. For most people, learning how to program has huge barriers: it’s learning complex “codes” while learning how to reduce the complex real world to the much more limited world of logical computer instructions. It all makes little sense in the beginning. With Hedy, a gradual language, this learning process is much easier. New students learn the concepts step by step, without being confronted with (what then still feels like) magic. Hedy was designed to teach Python, but recently a project was started to explore its applicability to COBOL. In this talk we will see how a “gradual” COBOL makes sense as compared to gradual Python, and who might be eligible and willing to learn COBOL in this new way. A fresh generation of motivated COBOL programmers may be the best future for the maintenance of our essential national ICT infrastructure.
