Compared to Java COBOL is surprisingly direct and readable. It has some silly bits that require some boilerplate to overcome but not excessively so.

> problem of cobol is that is verbose

My mother used to say, sometimes someone's good point is their bad point, and vice versa.

verbose languages can be harder to write, but easier to read.

On the other extreme is perl. I found it to be the easiest language to express myself. There are so many ways to do something, and in a compact way. But it's very hard to read.

Compared to the mess that is Javascript ... yikes ... no thanks.

Curious what language you would prefer? Just to trying to understand you argument better. Assembly?

Python is relatively low on the kind of boilerplate Java has.

(Or if you want to go more extreme, Haskell can really give you some terse programs.)

I'm not the OP.

As someone who has worked with both in a professional setting, Python has a lot of similarities with COBOL, IMO.

As someone who has also done that, the most important thing in common is that they're programming languages. COBOL is a rigid and "square" language, I'm tempted to call its style "COBOLic".

Any language where the dots at the end of statements are crucial part of the logic flow can't be that similar to Python.

Can you explain how? As someone that has worked with both professionally, I can't see many similarities.