COBOL
Shares rank 71 of 163 programming languages by recommenders
People recommend COBOL for reliable batch processing of business data and its readable, English-like syntax. Critics say its goto statements and unions make code hard to follow.
People recommend COBOL for reliable batch processing of business data and its readable, English-like syntax. Critics say its goto statements and unions make code hard to follow.
36 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 17
- criticize it
- 19
- approval share
- 47%
Recommended in 11 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 17 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 0.8 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 11 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Reliable and battle tested
“There's nothing that comes close to the level of reliability that these offer”
Comment from 1 Dec 2025 in “Response to "Ruby Is Not a Serious Programming Language"” “It works and its battle tested.”
Comment from 2 Jun 2026 in “US banks rely on a 65-year-old programming language” “COBOL systems work precisely because no one is constantly tinkering with them”
Comment from 12 May 2026 in “Show HN: Agentic interface for mainframes and COBOL” Readable, English-like syntax
“COBOL is a beautiful language, one of the most human readable ones we've ever had.”
Comment from 27 Dec 2025 in “Tell HN: I am afraid AI will take my job at some point” “it's readable and has an easy to understand English-like syntax”
Comment from 12 May 2026 in “Show HN: Agentic interface for mainframes and COBOL” Handles batch processing of business data
“it handles well its use case, batch processing business data”
Comment from 9 Sep 2026 in “C*: Unifying Programming and Verification in C (2025)” “COBOL was supposed to be a programming language for business critters.”
Comment from 22 May 2026 in “The XGO Programming Language” Modern standard with current tooling
“COBOL is now in ISO 2023, even has OOP features, there are ways to do microservices in it, and nice modern IDEs as well.”
Comment from 30 Sep 2026 in “Tcl/Tk 9.1” “job security, it is a compiled language, standard is still ongoing”
Comment from 1 Oct 2026 in “EDG C++ front-end goes public”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Seen as old and outdated
“Objective-C has joined Cobol in the category of zombie languages”
Comment from 1 Feb 2026 in “Swift is a more convenient Rust” “Cobol is old like a steam locomotive.”
Comment from 18 Dec 2025 in “Why Old Programming Languages Like COBOL, Fortran, and Lisp Still Matter” “They do rely on something that sounds like a COBOL mainframe from 40 years ago to me.”
Comment from 12 Oct 2026 in “The gap in shared understanding of LLM capability is widening” Goto and unions hard to follow
“Cobol also has goto statementsv and unions, which lend themselves to really hard to follow code.”
Comment from 5 Nov 2025 in “It's Mainframes All the Way Down” “Cobol has its 10 000 line single program functions.”
Comment from 19 Aug 2026 in “Node.js Is Doomed (and Back End Developers Are Panicking)” Verbose, unnatural English-like style
“They're both based on the outdated idea that a programming language should look like pidgin English rather than math.”
Comment from 26 Nov 2025 in “Python is not a great language for data science” “most attempts to be "more natural language like", such as COBOL or AppleScript, do become worse”
Comment from 23 Oct 2026 in “The foolishness of "natural language programming" (1978)” Career lock-in and hard migration
“Now we are stuck with COBOL and systems that are hard to migrate without damaging the economy.”
Comment from 20 Nov 2025 in “Researchers discover security vulnerability in WhatsApp” “Its carrier suicide if you want to ever do anything else again after that gig.”
Comment from 4 Aug 2026 in “AI migrated legacy COBOL programs to Java, bugs included” “I would definitely not suggest COBOL or MUMPS to a 20 year old, but as a niche for a 30 year old for a stable gig?”
Comment from 21 Jul 2026 in “What most histories get wrong about MUMPS's first standard”
Other programming languages people recommend
The four most recommended other programming languages, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
See all 163 programming languages, rankedWhat people said
36 of the 40 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“most attempts to be "more natural language like", such as COBOL or AppleScript, do become worse”
“We're all stuck writing COBOL now.”
“They do rely on something that sounds like a COBOL mainframe from 40 years ago to me.”
“Business BASIC was really a breath of fresh air in its time compared to the alternatives, like COBOL”
“every link I click on either doesn't work or takes me to a project for Go written in Go”
“job security, it is a compiled language, standard is still ongoing”
“COBOL is now in ISO 2023, even has OOP features, there are ways to do microservices in it, and nice modern IDEs as well.”
“it handles well its use case, batch processing business data”
“Cobol has its 10 000 line single program functions.”
“Its carrier suicide if you want to ever do anything else again after that gig.”
“Complaining about COBOL in 2026 feels like a joke, especially when doing AI coding”
“but it certainly is not now”
“I would definitely not suggest COBOL or MUMPS to a 20 year old, but as a niche for a 30 year old for a stable gig?”
“It works and its battle tested.”
“Can't be worse than COBOL”
“COBOL was supposed to be a programming language for business critters.”
“it's readable and has an easy to understand English-like syntax”
“COBOL systems work precisely because no one is constantly tinkering with them”
“the use of COBOL cripples the mind”
“the least sexy language ever invented”
“it is also the reason why people start new Cobol applications in 2026”
“COBOL certainly had a lasting impact, but only for some application domains.”
“COBOL is a simple computer language from a simpler time that enabled non-tech professionals from adjacent fields”
“it looks just like the English text they were trained on to begin with”
“Objective-C has joined Cobol in the category of zombie languages”
“VB6 apps haven't disappeared anymore than Cobol systems have.”
“it would be a giant pain to write”
“COBOL is a beautiful language, one of the most human readable ones we've ever had.”
“Cobol is old like a steam locomotive.”
“My first job was COBOL, 'nuff said about that.”
“There's nothing that comes close to the level of reliability that these offer”
“They're both based on the outdated idea that a programming language should look like pidgin English rather than math.”
“Now we are stuck with COBOL and systems that are hard to migrate without damaging the economy.”
“I debugged COBOL and once taught SQL to COBOL programmers while refusing to write anything in it.”
“COBOL is actually a pretty good AI prompting language”
“Cobol also has goto statementsv and unions, which lend themselves to really hard to follow code.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.