Mainframe developer resources/communities recommendations

General Knowledgebase
1

Hello all,

My name is Dylan Lee, and I am a Ph.D. student at the University of Tennessee.

I am working on a research project focused on building a greater understanding of how mainframe developers troubleshoot and seek help when developing in COBOL.

In an attempt to complete an exhaustive web search and ensure we are fully covering all of the COBOL-based forums and community hubs, we thought who better to ask than the forum users themselves. With all that said…

What are the different sites/forums/chat-rooms that you use to ask questions and find answers when developing COBOL?

What are some existing resources for learning/troubleshooting and discussing COBOL?

Any help will be greatly appreciated! Thank you!

1 Like
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Hello Dylan.

My name is Paul G McKenzie.

I have many years experience using Cobol.

Here is a link to my website, we could talk if you think I can help.

https://tutoringinthecloud.com/

Here is a link to my linkedin profile.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-g-mckenzie/

3

Hi Dylan,
My name is Uday Prasad, I am a mainframe trainer and teach application programming on IBM MAINFRAME using CObol, CICS,JCL and DB2.
I have more than 30 years of work experience on this platform ,.
Looking at your query I am keen on helping/working with you to get your research take a direction,
Please contact me on
prasad,uday60@gmail.com
My whats app number in +919850840388
I stay in India and am plus five and half hours ahead of GMT. (IST
You can reach me on any day any time.

Regards
Uday

4

Dear Lee
I am Uday again. Can you please also tell us on how to get into a PHD research on topics pertaining to IBM MAINFRAME and cobol. What could be other topics on which we can pick up the research work on this platform? Where to find which universities would be encourage further research on this subject. what should be way ahead?

Regards
Uday

5

Hello Paul,

Thank you so much for the reply. We could absolutely benefit from your experience! If you would be willing to participating in an interview regarding COBOL development, or to even just share some of your thoughts, feel free to reach out over email, mine is dlee97@vols.utk.edu, or via LinkedIn, whatever you prefer. I can give you more info into our project and how you could help. Thanks again!
-Dylan

6

Hi Uday,

Thank you for the reply and interest in our work! I can send more information on our project and how you could help to you via your email.
As for finding a University to work on research regarding COBOL, I am very fortunate that I get to work on this project over the summer, and while it certainly has many aspects that relate to my Ph.D. research, it is not my central Ph.D. topic.

My (very novice) advice would be to look for specific professors, rather than universities, that would be willing to fund or pursue grants to fund this type of research. As I’m sure you know, there are not many university professors interested in COBOL, so like in my case, since we are also looking into things like the development tools, benchmarks, and resources surrounding COBOL, I am able to apply newer methods developed in HCI and software dev productivity research to an older language and community like COBOL. This is what will somewhat connect this work with my main Ph.D. topic and also keep it relevant with work being done on newer languages.

Hope that helps some and I look forward to the opportunity to talk further!

-Dylan