cobol []

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====== COBOL ======

COBOL, the COmmon Business-Oriented Language, was created by the CODASYL
consortium in 1959. COBOL was designed to be used for business
programming tasks, and, as such, the language has had little interaction
with, or input from, the computer science community. In fact, computer
scientists including Edsger Dijkstra have heavily criticised the
language.

One of the design goals of the language was for COBOL programs to be
readable (and perhaps writable) by non-programmers, such as executives.
COBOL has, however, arguably failed at this goal. The language adopts an
immensely verbose syntax, but also rigid structural requirements, which
have their origins in the era of punched cards. It provides only limited
support for structured programming.

Despite its shortcomings, COBOL is still widely used in business and
government applications, and estimates claim that many billions of lines
of COBOL code (a testament to its verbosity as much as its popularity)
are maintained today, primarily as legacy applications.

===== Example =====

==== Hello World ====


     FMT CB ......-A+++B+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 
            *************** Beginning of data ************************************* 
    0001.00        PROGRAM-ID. HELLO.                                               
    0002.00        PROCEDURE DIVISION.                                              
    0003.00            DISPLAY "HELLO, WORLD"                                       
    0004.00            STOP RUN.                                                    
            ****************** End of data ****************************************
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