None of this really seems to be just COBOL's fault. COBOL is a compiled language, so once compiled into machine language it doesn't matter as long as it runs.

None of this really seems to be just COBOL's fault. COBOL is a compiled language, so once compiled into machine language it doesn't matter as long as it runs. I would be looking more at what hardware its on which is probably some Big Iron running system/360 that has a 2 week turnaround to add some extra memory. The code probably runs just fine, it's the hardware support cost and turnaround time that will be the constraint.