On 25/10/2021 2:35 pm, Simon Sobisch wrote:
Am 25.10.2021 um 05:00 schrieb Bruce Axtens:
G'day everyone
Just letting you know that I've created a gnu-cobol track on
Exercism.org .
It would be useful to rename/restart as either "gnucobol" (if you need
the actual implementation in) or COBOL (or cobol) otherwise [just check:
is there clang and gcc or only "C"].
It's gnu-cobol internally (management decision) but everyone will just
see "COBOL" and I'll make sure my docs say "gnucobol" where required.
As I get going on this I have some questions:
1. Should I insist on free-format or standard format for students'
code?
No. If you need to insist on one then use fixed-form reference-format as
many existing tools (like official SQL preprocessors) can only handle
fixed-form and have at least 1 exercise in free-form reference-format
and another for fixed-form with COBOL 2002 adjustments (inline comments
with *>, compiler directives >>, literal continuation indicator as "a"-
" string; concatenation expression with &).
Noted. Thank you.
2. Is there are preferred unit test framework? I've discovered
three.
No. Evaluate the ones you see and then do a choice. It is likely useful
for the mailing list to send your evaluation back to the list and if you
did not come to a final result ask for comments.
Most of the other languages have a minimum of 20 exercises before moving
off into more creative tasks. I could do with some suggestions re tasks
that introduce the student to the data processing capabilities of COBOL.
Noted. Thank you.
You may want to have a look what topics are handled in the following
tutorial:
https://sourceforge.net/p/gnucobol/contrib/HEAD/tree/trunk/samples/worldcities/
...
http://www.csis.ul.ie/cobol/
...
Simply re-expressing all the VB.NET (for example) exercises in COBOL
seems a bit pointless.
If it is done well it may still be quite useful, but you'll likely add
at least the different file ORGANISATIONs in COBOL.
Also noted. Again, thank you.
Thank you for reaching out and for giving a different audience of people
a chance to get to know COBOL.
Has to be done. Whether I'm the best one for the job is debatable but
unless IBM or MicroFocus want to do what GoBridge has done (see
<https://exercism.org/blog/exercism-is-the-official-go-mentoring-platform>),
it's me and whoever joins in.
Bruce
