To be a good replacement, it has to work in as many of the same environments with their constraints. It needs to have the same kinds of number types (e.g. BCD w

To be a good replacement, it has to work in as many of the same environments with their constraints. It needs to have the same kinds of number types (e.g. BCD with fixed decimals) It needs to be able to call into machine language routines/libraries. I think the best language to replace COBOL is COBOL. The newer versions are nothing like the original ones. I've written Windows and OS/2 GUI programs using the Win16/32 and OS/2 PM APIs from COBOL in the 90s and I'm sure there's been more progress in the language since.