was COBOL this bad?

...maybe it never had the opportunity.

But the COBOL of the Internet (tm) seems to be...

http://lwn.net/Articles/364528

Google is forking existing FOSS code bits for Chromium like a rabbit
makes babies: frequently, and usually, without much thought. Rather
than leverage the existing APIs from upstream projects like icu,
libjingle, and sqlite (just to name a few), they simply fork a point
in time of that code and hack their API to shreds for chromium to use.
This is akin to much of the Java methodology, which I can sum up as
'I'd like to use this third-party code, but my application is too
special to use it as is, so I covered it with Bedazzler Jewels and
Neon Underlighting, then bury my blinged out copy in my application.'.
A fair amount of the upstream Chromium devs seem to have Java
backgrounds, which may explain this behavior, but it does not excuse
it. This behavior should be a last resort, not a first instinct.

and http://lwn.net/Articles/365445/ is even nicer...