Doesn't look like it's mentioned here, but expense of the COBOL toolchain has got to be an issue for its uptake.<p>Paid toolchains have essentially failed in software engineering. There are some hybrid business models in game engine toolchains, but moving towards more free/open/flexible systems has resulted in huge growth. You can pay for support from certain companies, but that's not quite the same.<p>If you want to run COBOL, you typically need to buy a compiler, buy specialist hardware, and buy an IDE. There are open COBOL compilers but COBOL compilers have compatibility issues worse than browsers so particular compilers do matter.<p>The most modern and accessible COBOL development that I'm aware of is JVM/CLR COBOL developed in Visual Studio/Eclipse. You can even run it on Android! But you have to buy the whole toolchain, and it's very much "call us for pricing", not low prices and putting in a card number.<p>This ultimately prevents new people from joining the community as open/free compilers and toolchains are essentially table stakes at this point, and that means the community is only going to shrink.