COBOL was developed in 1959 by a group called the CODASYL Committee. CODASYL is an abbreviation for Conference on Data Systems Languages. This committee included representatives from academia, user groups, and computer manufacturers. The ultimate objective of this committee was to develop a standard business-oriented language for which all major manufacturers would provide compilers.

As a business-oriented language COBOL is designed specifically for commercial applications, such as payroll and inventory that typically operate on a large volume of data. The language instructions are very English-like, but the programmer has substantial choice as to whether to make a program self-documenting or obscure.