Ada looks nothing like COBOL., except perhaps in the most superficial sense (a bit keyword heavy compared to most other languages). The syntactic structure is really not far from what people are familiar with, in sharp contrast to COBOL. Rosettacode is a good site if you want to find some interesting (small) comparisons between languages. This is from the GCD page:
The COBOL version:
IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.
PROGRAM-ID. GCD.
DATA DIVISION.
WORKING-STORAGE SECTION.
01 A PIC 9(10) VALUE ZEROES.
01 B PIC 9(10) VALUE ZEROES.
01 TEMP PIC 9(10) VALUE ZEROES.
PROCEDURE DIVISION.
Begin.
DISPLAY "Enter first number, max 10 digits."
ACCEPT A
DISPLAY "Enter second number, max 10 digits."
ACCEPT B
IF A < B
MOVE B TO TEMP
MOVE A TO B
MOVE TEMP TO B
END-IF
PERFORM UNTIL B = 0
MOVE A TO TEMP
MOVE B TO A
DIVIDE TEMP BY B GIVING TEMP REMAINDER B
END-PERFORM
DISPLAY "The gcd is " A
STOP RUN.
function Gcd (A, B : Integer) return Integer is
M : Integer := A;
N : Integer := B;
T : Integer;
begin
while N /= 0 loop
T := M;
M := N;
N := T mod N;
end loop;
return M;
end Gcd;
static int gcd(int a, int b)
{
while (b != 0) b = a % (a = b); // not clear at all, good way to avoid a temporary variable
return a;
}
static int gcd(int a, int b)
int t;
while (b != 0) {
t = b;
b = a % b;
a = b;
}
return a;
}