I mean its obvious that we really should be looking at APL/K/Q/J as the replacement for COBOL. /s Actually though, I believe that modern Ada would probably be

I mean its obvious that we really should be looking at APL/K/Q/J as the replacement for COBOL. /s Actually though, I believe that modern Ada would probably be the best upgrade path in these cases. It has a strong static type system, it has first class support for fixed types, with Contracts and SPARK you can get strong guarantees of correctness, and as a compiled language is decently fast. Contracts and such do automatically insert runtime checks which can effect performance however if they are causing a legitimate issue can be reduced via compiler flags (not super safe) or by verifying that they are unnecessary in code. (demonstrating correctness to the compiler via SPARK) In systems such as Finance, languages such as Ada (in its modern form) have a real chance to shine given their speed, safety guarantees, and remarkable stability.