NOthing complicated about COBOL, that's why they sold it to business easily. You just describe what you want to happen. You literally address every single space on the page. Tedious, but not rocket surgery until you get into the serious math modules. And most of them have already been written by now, with instructions on tweaking.
People were really excited when they started selling compilers for PCs. No more sending the program to the mainframe and waiting your turn to get the error messages back. A co-ed friend used to borrow my computer and do her homework naked. It was worth it.