TL; DR: The author seems to use "COBOL" as a negative example of language reserved word complexity. Specifically, he points out ANSI COBOL 85 seems to have the

TL; DR: The author seems to use "COBOL" as a negative example of language reserved word complexity. Specifically, he points out ANSI COBOL 85 seems to have the most: 357 reserved words. He contrasts this with SystemVerilog, which seems to have 250 + 73 reserved system functions = 323. He spends the remainder of the article describing thoughts arising, on said language complexity, from conversations at a “10 Years of IEEE 1800™ SystemVerilog Celebration” lunch, at an IEEE Standard Association symposium. The author uses anonymous hallway and table conversations with SystemVerilog luminaries as a platform for critical analysis of not only the current SystemVerilog language standard, but the IEEE process and committee by which it was formed and ratified.