By Sourabh Kulesh
Publication Date: 2026-02-27 09:16:00
COBOL is in the headlines again, and this time it is because of artificial intelligence (AI) – sparking conversations with tools emerging that claim to translate legacy code and, with it, solve the modernization challenge. On February 23, IBM’s stock suffered its worst single-day drop in over 25 years after AI startup Anthropic claimed its Claude Code tool could automate the modernisation of COBOL — the decades-old programming language that underpins IBM’s mainframe business – wiping roughly $40 billion off the company’s market value. But to understand why that announcement rattled markets so severely, we need to get an idea on what COBOL is and why it has refused to go away. In this article, we are explaining about this computer language and how it works.
What is COBOL?
COBOL stands for Common Business-Oriented Language and was created in 1959. It was partly drawn on the work of computing pioneer Grace Hopper and was built for a single purpose: processing business data….
