I know: You and me hate COBOL. I took a look at a lot of code examples and it didn't take me long to know why everybody tries to avoid it. So I really have no idea: Why was COBOL ever used? I mean: Hey - there was Fortran before it, and Fortran looks like a jesus-language compared to COBOL. This isn't argumentative but historical as I'm young and didn't even know about COBOL before 4 months.