It's not just COBOL, it's the whole OS environment -- which, for a lot of these old systems, involves legacy mainframe tech (z/OS) with its own peculiar jargon.

It's not just COBOL, it's the whole OS environment -- which, for a lot of these old systems, involves legacy mainframe tech (z/OS) with its own peculiar jargon. Basic concepts like "file", "directory", and "disk drive" have different names, and subtly different relationships, and the closest thing to shell scripting is the notorious JCL, with a syntax derived from assembly language (back when writing applications in assembly was a common thing), and described more than once by the person most responsible for it (Fred Brooks) as "the worst computer programming language ever devised by anybody, anywhere". Here's a blow-by-blow from someone who was, at the time, dealing with some of these systems as part of the United States Digital Service, and thought she ought to get to know the beast up close. It's not pretty: https://medium.com/the-technical-archaeologist/hello-world-on-z-os-a0ef31c1e87f https://medium.com/the-technical-archaeologist/hello-world-o...