I feel like knowing some COBOL would be a handy thing considering how much of it is still hanging around. My main problem is that it's easy to find toy examples of doing some simple things, but all the value is in supporting massive, decrepit old codebases. I wish I could find a good example of that with some descriptions helping me unravel it, so I could take on a bit of COBOL work with confidence.
I love WASM and I love being able to wrap legacy work up so it can be called with modern systems (I did an AS/400 driver so a decades-old but still updated DB2 could be queried by a Drupal Commerce site), so this project is exciting. Just wish I could connect the obvious advantages I see in this project and other stuff like cloudflare's announcement with something full of pitfalls.
But I think learning Cobol is only about 25% -- the hard parts are knowing what the legacy codes does vs. what it's supposed to do vs. what you really want to do, understand how and when the Cobol code actually runs on the legacy system (JCLs, schedulers, etc.), understanding what arbitrary limitations you must carry over to your new system, etc. -- all of which is probably not documented very well.
I love WASM and I love being able to wrap legacy work up so it can be called with modern systems (I did an AS/400 driver so a decades-old but still updated DB2 could be queried by a Drupal Commerce site), so this project is exciting. Just wish I could connect the obvious advantages I see in this project and other stuff like cloudflare's announcement with something full of pitfalls.