COBOL Programmers Are the Original Vibe Coders

I was reading Marianne Bellotti’s Kill It with Fire when I found a description of COBOL that sounded strangely familiar: COBOL was a language built for people who did not want to understand how the computer worked; they just wanted to get the job done. Today, we would probably call those people vibe coders. That comparison might sound insulting to COBOL programmers, vibe coders, or both. I don’t mean it that way.