What is COBOL?

COBOL (Common Business Oriented Language) is a programming language created in the 1950s to help businesses write software for tasks like accounting and payroll. It uses English-like words so non-programmers can read and understand the code more easily.

Let's break it down

  • Common: meant to be shared and used by many different companies.
  • Business Oriented: designed specifically for business problems such as money calculations, reports, and data processing.
  • Language: a set of rules and words that tell a computer what to do.
  • 1950s: it’s an old language, but still around because many big systems still rely on it.
  • English-like words: the code reads almost like plain English (e.g., “ADD”, “SUBTRACT”, “DISPLAY”), making it easier for people who aren’t programmers to follow.

Why does it matter?

Even though it’s old, COBOL still runs the core systems of banks, governments, and large corporations, handling billions of dollars every day. Understanding it helps maintain, modernize, or replace critical legacy applications that can’t afford downtime.

Where is it used?

  • Banking: core banking platforms that process deposits, withdrawals, and loan calculations.
  • Insurance: policy administration and claims processing systems.
  • Government: tax filing, social security, and unemployment benefit systems.
  • Retail: large inventory and point-of-sale back-office processing.

Good things about it

  • Extremely reliable for high-volume, transaction-heavy workloads.
  • Very readable syntax reduces the chance of logic errors in business rules.
  • Strong support for fixed-point decimal arithmetic, perfect for money calculations.
  • Mature tooling and decades of proven stability.
  • Large existing codebases mean many organizations already have COBOL expertise.

Not-so-good things

  • Few new developers learn COBOL, leading to a shrinking talent pool.
  • The language lacks modern features like built-in web support or easy integration with cloud services.
  • Development tools can feel outdated compared with contemporary IDEs.
  • Updating or refactoring legacy COBOL systems can be costly and risky.