You can write expressive code in any language and you can write non-expressive code in those same languages. Real world COBOL (which would be COBOL 85 and earli

You can write expressive code in any language and you can write non-expressive code in those same languages. Real world COBOL (which would be COBOL 85 and earlier) is not going to be nearly as nice to write as many of the langauges that you provided as examples. You lack things like generics (which AFAIK are still not in the language) and collections (which show up in COBOL 2014). Until 2002 there wasn't free form COBOL either. Now, it is entirely possible for COBOL to make a comeback and become "hip", but it is going to require a lot of tooling and other development that just isn't happening now.