> COBOL is really, really bad from the point of view of a developer. It's frustrating, verbose, and tends to produce huge spaghetti code. THAT is true of any l

> COBOL is really, really bad from the point of view of a developer. It's frustrating, verbose, and tends to produce huge spaghetti code. THAT is true of any language, the fact that COBOL has divisions does make it a bit easier. But you can also do very structored code in COBOL and code without using the GOTO verb. However many systems and code born the scars of the time. Fast code really did make a difference and was measurable in cost a lot more upon an expensive mainframe and when your processing near on a million records, very noticable in costs. So GOTO got used a lot, as coding for exception handling using structured programming like JSP (Jackson Structured Programming - the thing in the COBOL days) whilst doable, wasn't the fastest code and equally, not that readable if you didn't know the methodology behind JSP. But over time you don't see the language, you see it from a data perspective and with that, code however laid out becomes easier to manage and by that, anybody else's code will look a bit yuk to you. Indeed it is rare to work on somebody else's code and come away with a warm fuzzy glow.