When I first started out as an applications programmer, the first thing we were taught was IBM Basic Assembler Language (BAL)! We did that for a couple of weeks and then moved on to be taught how to write COBOL. The key lesson we took away was that, of course, at the end of the day COBOL is just a high-level language that still has to be turned into Assembler and that, for the majority of folk, COBOL is quicker & easier to write and to understand than BAL! Hence, depending on compiler options, a COBOL listing (on IBM S/360 etc) would include an equivalent BAL listing of the COBOL source code (handy for debugging). Do tell me to stop if I’m boring you...