The language isn't dead (and doesn't have to be). If anything, it must be taught as part of a programming language design course. In a way COBOL is similar to S

The language isn't dead (and doesn't have to be). If anything, it must be taught as part of a programming language design course. In a way COBOL is similar to SQL which is far from dying. (IMHO it would have been useful if they had merged into one language; the available embedding of SQL into COBOL was kinda clunky.)