I started to learn this at Polytechnic in 1984 on a VAX computer. This was a fun time, the VAX had a mixture of VDU and teletype terminals for EDITING our programs. To write the program we used coding sheets, handwritten forms laid out with the column positions and line width specific to COBOL. These were then passed to the typing pool who keyed them in for us. The meant we could write code wherever we were, in our rooms, in the park and even in the pub!
I continued to write COBOL code in my first job at a manufacturing company, maintaining and improving the order processing applications used by the Customer Service team. Writing new apps for the sample shipping department, the warehouse stock management and transportation departments, a MRP (Manufacturing Resource Planning) system for the production department.
All of this done on VAX mini mainframe computers; A DEC Vax 11/785, which we later upgraded to a 8700 and a MicroVax 3100, which we named Elwood and Jake.
Following a merger in late 1989 with a company in Holland and our parent company installing an IBM AS/400 there, I rewrote several of these programs on that
mainframe.
We also had Microfocus Cobol installed for some PC development, which I did a little dabbling with but that was left to my colleague.
It's pleasing to note that the warehouse software I wrote back in 1990 was still being used by the department in the mid 2010's before the site and UK operation was closed down.
Initially on an Apple II in 1979/1980 when my mom brought the school computer home in the holidays so she could learn more about it, me and my brother got to use it in between. Luckily mom was very interested in new tech and gadgets and realised it was the future so provided as much as she could to us.
She later brought home a Sinclair ZX80 from school, and then we received a ZX81 as a present for us both to use. Then later a BBC model B.
All of these computers included BASIC which both my brother and I explored, taking it in timed turns (so my dad recently told me) to write computer programs. Initially learning my typing in listings from computer magazines before developing our own.
One of the most popular we typed in was a farm simulator. One I wrote was a solitaire card game for the BBC, which when one of my cousins came round, he spent 4 hours playing so he could beat it.