Here is the complete story about 300 year old people on the Social Security Databases. Grace M. Hopper is the key.

[Kilgore]

3. So why?

My experience with COBOL dates back to the late 70's. It's a good language for the time, but it's beyond me why it's still around today. It's been patched & revised as the decades went by and from what I understand,the 2014 version is generally regarded as the end of life. Recently a former coworker was contacted by a headhunter looking for a COBOL programmer. He's 68 for Pete's sake! His response was to Bugger Off!!

I don't agree with much happening today, but I fully support a modernization of the feds computer systems.

Here is a good write-up on COBOL

https://history-computer.com/technology/cobol-guide/

Here is a telling snip from the article,

The program is still in use, but it is seen as a legacy language. The need for COBOL programmers often stems from the desire to maintain the software until it can migrate to a modern language.