All the recent interest in COBOL due to its use in large financial systems is fascinating. Just because a language is old doesn't mean it is useless or that people aren't using it to engineer important systems.
I have fond childhood memories of going to the local university with my mom when she would work on her COBOL programs for school. She would sit at a 3270 terminal in a computer lab typing away and when she was done she would print out her code on 132 column green and white paper to be turned in.