I would disagree with that. When (if!) students then go out and start using cobol for real, they are far more likely to come across fixed format, or some variation of it. Companies and organisations generally like to keep some standards, and if they've been using cobol since before free format was generally available, then they are likely to still be using some form of fixed format. Our projects still keep to generally fixed format, except that we can go over the column 72 limit. In our case to column 255. For this reason at least, concentrate initially on fixed format, explaining why, and only then go onto free format. Dave Michael Anderson wrote: > For Students, Free Format is the best. > > > On 10/24/21 10:00 PM, Bruce Axtens wrote: >> G'day everyone >> >> Just letting you know that I've created a gnu-cobol track on >> Exercism.org . >> >> As I get going on this I have some questions: >> >> 1. Should I insist on free-format or standard format for students' >> code? >> >> 2. Is there are preferred unit test framework? I've discovered >> three. >> >> 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. Simply re-expressing all the VB.NET (for >> example) exercises in COBOL seems a bit pointless. >> >> Kind regards, >> >> Bruce.
