Customer Reviews

Mastering COBOL with CDROM

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The most comprehensive book on COBOL that I have ever seen. This book is an incredible deal as it contains the latest Fujitsu COBOL compiler. I whole-heartedly recommend this book for intermediate or advanced users (beginners should read an introductory book first).

Contains stuff I couldn't find anywhere else and the brand new Fujitsu compiler - a steal

This is the best COBOL book I have ever read - clear (concepts, usages), resourceful (you can find everything you need very easily), practical (good examples). It has everything a COBOL expert may need.

I haven't coded in cobol for 14 years. Prior to that there was 17 years programming experience in PL/1, cobol, and early visual basic. The author compiled many different sources for the material in this book so not all sections were easy to read. I found sections of this book reminding me of the IBM language manuals of the 70's and 80's that perfected an obtuse programming english dialect. Here's a sample from this book's description of the EVALUATE statement :
'When an EVALUATE statement includes multiple subject expressions, indicated by ALSO phrases before the first WHEN, there must be an equal number of object phrases. These objects must match the type of subject expressions, in the order they are written. In this case, the whole set of subject expressions is evaluated and saved, then this set of values is compared to the set of objects until a match is found. By match, we mean that each subject matches its corresponding object.'
Understand that this paragraph is NOT talking about OOP objects.
Not all of this book reads like this, but enough of it does to make me want to scream. There have got to be clearer books on cobol available.
No beginner should even consider buying this book. I bought it for $.01 plus shipping so it was a good price, but I wouldn't pay much more for it.

I think the book offers enough info for me to not only learn the language but also refer to it at a later time, ensuring true value for money, the free compiler is free anyway from the fujitsu website, so buying it for that reason is not worthwhile, purchase it as a reference tool and as a advanced beginning tool, if you can stand the heat from the COBOL kitchen you'll find you can cook some pretty delicious COBOL delights.

I am a professional programmer and purchased this book to develop COBOL programs on my desktop. The book contains tons of information on COBOL, but virtually NONE on how to use the included software. There are several good pieces of software included on the cd (Crystal Reports, 2 different GUI-COBOL interfaces) but, again, very little documentation on how to use them. My advice: Buy Sams "COBOL in 24 Hours" (which includes the Fujitsu V3 COBOL compiler)and download the free COBOL compiler from the Fujitsu website. I learn quicker with the "Let's build an application" approach that Sams uses. Good luck.

I use COBOL at work and I'm sure the book is comprehensive, but I bought it mainly for the compiler. With close to 1,000 pages I think its a disservice that so little of the book is devoted to using the compiler. Instead of coding I'm experimenting with a byzantine piece of software to deduce how to use it. To add injury to insult I was looking for a "how to" book for the compiler and found I could've saved $10.00 if I had bought it at amazon.