[COmmon Business-Oriented Language] (Synonymous with
evil.) A weak, verbose, and flabby language used by
code grinders to do boring mindless things on
dinosaur mainframes. Hackers believe that all COBOL
programmers are suits or
code grinders, and no self-respecting hacker will ever admit to
having learned the language. Its very name is seldom uttered without
ritual expressions of disgust or horror. One popular one is Edsger W.
Dijkstra's famous observation that The use of COBOL cripples the
mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal
offense.
(from Selected Writings on Computing: A
Personal Perspective) See also
fear and loathing, software rot.