I used COBOL for maybe 5 years (roughly from 1988 to 1993). The language is not complex at all, but as you correctly point out it is verbose. And handling vari

I used COBOL for maybe 5 years (roughly from 1988 to 1993). The language is not complex at all, but as you correctly point out it is verbose. And handling variables is quite tedious. It can work more or less fine if you couple it with a RDBMS, but if you are instead using IBM files and job scheduling/control you add another layer of stuff to learn. Again, more tedious than esoteric. I would not enjoy going back to it, probably (in any case I am not really writing code anymore in my current position) but if it was the only alternative to starving I would have no big qualms picking it up again.