COBOL was developed in the early 1960s by computer scientists from universities, mainframe manufacturers, the defense and banking industries, and government. Based on ideas developed by programming pioneer Grace Hopper, it was driven by the need for a language that could run on a variety of different kinds of mainframes.

First, a brief history lesson is in order: COBOL, short for Common Business Oriented Language, was developed in 1959 by a team that was led by the famed Grace Hopper. The goal was to develop a language that was user-friendly: It could run on any kind of computer operating system at the time. And, any kind of person could understand it.