Hi tomcat24,
You can try GNU COBOL.
IMHO, for the beginning the simplest is to download OpenCOBOL IDE which currently contains GNU COBOL version 2.0.0:
https://launchpad.net/cobcide/+download
I have it on W7 but it should work on W10 too.

What is your planned use in the Windows environment? There are commercially available solutions (in addition to GNU) that might contain a better choice, depending on your use case.

Tom Morrison
Consultant

Micro Focus makes a Visual COBOL that's pretty robust and full featured. It also has commercial support which is great if you're using it in a business context.

Back in my corporate days, we used Microfocus on the Windows PC for development and then deployed Microfocus COBOL onto Unix platforms for testing and production. I don't have any experience or opinion of Microfocus on Windows server.

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advanced cognitive capabilities and other marketing buzzwords explained with sarcastic simplicity

GNU COBOL works fine on win10 on my system. I didn't trye all the features but a first try worked nice and was also fast.

MicroFocus is ok when you can afford the costs.

When you work with a prompt and an older COBOL, you need probably to set the legacy setting of the CMD prompt to on. CA Realia works also with this setting. Without the setting, it is incredibly slow. A program to get an idea of the speed, uses 0.04 seconds. Whithout the legacy setting, it takes several minutes.

I never understand Microsoft with these things. It does not feel ok. It feels like sabotage.

Also talking about legacy is in fact not nice at all, certainly when you can still use your work from 30 years ago. One should talk about Return On Investment = ROI.

Buy a car. Will it work after 30 years? Probably not. Your COBOL program probably will. That is the big difference.

It is not so honest to discourage people to enjoy their ROI.

Have fun!

Thanks everyone