Welcome to Advent of Computing, the show that talks about the shocking, intriguing, and all too often relevant history of computing. A lot of little things we take for granted today have rich stories behind their creation, in each episode we will learn how older tech has lead to our modern world.
http://adventofcomputing.com/
episode 60: COBOL Never Dies
COBOL! Just its name can strike terror in the hearts of programmers. This language is old, it follows its own strange syntax, and somehow still runs the world of finance and government. But is COBOL really as bad as it's made out to be? Today we are talking a look at the languages origins and how it's become isolated from early every other programming language in common use. Perhaps most importantly for me, we will see is Grace Hopper should really be blamed for unleashing this beast onto mainframes.
Selected Sources:
https://archive.org/details/historyofprogram0000hist - History of Programming Languages, contains Sammet's account of CODASYL
https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_codasylCOB_6843924/ - COBOL 60 Manual
https://sci-hub.do/10.1016/0066-4138%2860%2990042-2 - FLOW-MATIC/MATH-MATIC usage paper