@kodizen Hopefully you already know one programming language. I would go to this github repo, find the examples in the language you're familiar with, ask the bot to translate it into GnuCOBOL and then futz with it until it works.
GnuCOBOL + vscode seems to be the least effort way to get a development environment going.
If your aim is paid work, then it looks like it is still used as a language-as-ETL-framework thing.
https://github.com/coding-horror/basic-computer-games?ref=blog.codinghorror.com