My first programming job was in COBOL. I don't even list it on my resume. I taught a class in COBOL at UConn a long time ago. The IBM mainframe instruction set is a practically perfect target for compiled COBOL. As I recall, the 'translate and test' instruction has a COBOL counterpart. And the PIC format is very clever. All in all, a nice language for business-related record processing.
COBOL is one of the easier languages to learn but I have yet to see a job ad for a COBOL programmer.
