The hatred comes from people like me, who have worked with COBOL and will tell you it's terribly frustrating to work with, needlessly verbose in multiple places where it doesn't need to be, and often used in banks for purposes which are the death of all you hold dear or interesting to work with.

COBOL is not an interesting programming language these days, and you should not learn it unless you need it for your current job.

> [COBOL was] designed, initially, for non-programmers to be able to describe in words what it is they would like to accomplish in a way they could be understood by the computer.

Let me tell you a secret. It doesn't work for non-programmers. The complexity of "Z = X + Y" is no more or less than "ADD X TO Y GIVING Z", and bugs will happen at the same rate with either syntax. The added verbosity will only annoy you.

Another myth surrounding COBOL is that as its programmers age, there is a lack of them and therefore COBOL jobs are high-paying and you should learn it to make good money. The reality: I've never met a really wealthy COBOL programmer -- or rather, one who was wealthy because he/she knew COBOL. That's not where the money is. COBOL jobs are not particularly well-paying, and there are young people learning it, and no, they don't get awesome paychecks.