Comment by JD1967

I no longer develop in COBOL but I did for 20 years, and never touched a mainframe. I worked on a mid-size vertical ERP system (back then it wasn't called "ERP") that originated on Data General using Interactive COBOL, which is where the SCREEN SECTION originated.

The application (thousands of programs) were ported to Unix with a ICOBOL compatible compiler (no longer available) and then later to AcuCOBOL was absorbed by MicroFocus, but now looks like an independent company has revived it as an independent product (Rocket).

One of my projects was to rip out most COBOL I/O and replace with embedded SQL.

Later it was ported to Windows, and used the GUI controls available in AcuCOBOL. You'd have been hard pressed to tell the difference between those COBOL apps and any VB6 or WPF app on Windows. With embedded SQL, the GUI controls in the SCREEN SECTION, and COBOL p-code and memory management, it was actually a rather nice little 4GL type development system.

Many people who look down upon COBOL never actually used it. It had its flaws for sure, but it wasn't all that bad.