Within the JVM community, once in a while somebody jokes about getting old and therefore needing to start learning COBOL. Usually, someone responds that there are indeed some “precious older people” who wrote COBOL, or dare I say it, still write COBOL today. For me, COBOL has always sounded like a relic of the past. Something you read about, not something you seriously consider learning. But lately, I have been hearing rumours about companies starting to recruit new employees specifically to fill COBOL vacancies. That triggered me hard enough to start wondering. Can I actually run COBOL on my own laptop today, and if so, can I have a reasonably nice developer experience while doing so?