CODASYL (Conference on Data Systems Languages) created COBOL (COmmon Business Oriented Language) so that non-technical managers could read code. In that respect, COBOL was a big win.

Yeah, it's wordy ("Copy Of BASIC Only Longer"), but there's still a use for it. Same with RPG, Assembler, FORTRAN, etc.

Of course, as a scripting language, COBOL probably wouldn't cut it.

DISPLAY "JUST ANOTHER COBOL HACKER" AT COLUMN 20 ROW 13.

Of course, in 20 or 30 years, people will probably be laughing at VB, C, Delphi, perl, Tk, linux, etc.

Just my $0.02