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To me, Fortran, Pascal and even modern Visual Basic are very similar and there isn't much difference. They do make it easier to read since you can name your Function, Procedure, Subroutine, Sub and all variables anything you want.

C++ and Java++ are less readable.

And you are right that COBOL and Assembly care quite different, but I learned both at the same time and I saw many similarities in some things. Like Assembly was the underlying language for COBOL. I know that this wasn't the case. I never used either after I graduated. In fact, ALL of the languages I learned In school were quickly becoming obsolete at that time with object programming becoming the new norm.

The languages I was recently using at work were the Microsoft Visual Studio (C# and VB.net) and some javascript. I also wrote some Access databases with VBA. I retired last year.