Comment by glonq

This sounds a bit familiar. I used to work at a medium-sized company whose systems were based on COBOL code and Unisys mini/mainframe hardware from the 80's. We even had a person employed as a "tape ape"; thankfully not me. Throughout the next decade or two they tried various 4GL-generated facades and bolt-ons but could never escape from that COBOL core. Eventually I think they migrated the software to some kind of big box that emulated the Unisys environment but was slightly more civilized. I have no idea whether they ever eradicated all the COBOL though.