Why does the “Hello world” program in COBOL look so confusing? Can someone explain how it works?

Answer 1

As far as the actual procedure code is concerned, COBOL's version of Hello World isn't all that complicated. It's just that a COBOL program requires more than just the Procedure Division to compile. For a simple app like Hello World, there isn't much for the other program divisions to do, but they still need to be included to satisfy proper program syntax.