Recently (late March 2017), I started learning COBOL programming just for fun.
It started off quite simply. As it happened, it was a discovery that COBOL has a feature for designing screen interfaces (layouts) by using SCREEN section. The following idea soon came to my mind: It seems that it is relatively and easily to create text-based applications like classical STAR-TREK game. Text-based applications has still importance for devices like Raspberry Pi with limited CPU power and memory because of its lightweight and fast nature, as compared with GUI-based applications, in my opinion. Besides, OpenCOBOL can be installed in a single line on Raspberry Pi with Raspbian. Only professionals can use COBOL on mainframe computers even now (maybe) but OpenCOBOL on Raspberry Pi is "for the rest of us".
Different from a PC, one of the unique advantage about Raspberry Pi is the availability of GPIO pins. As a first step, I tried to write a small program to control GPIO pins in COBOL. So far I do have very little knowledge about COBOL except for that it is a programming language with long history and it has been used for developing business applications, as its name implies (COmmon Business Oriented Language). As an electronics hobbyist, I am quite new to COBOL and therefore, COBOL Gurus can find many blemish points in my source code(s) but at least, it works.
I hope to add more piece of source codes to the repository as I learn more about COBOL, as well as Raspberry Pi, and I would be glad if someone might find these codes useful.