Real programmers used SAS (a combination of Fortran and REXX). It has a double pass pre-compiler so you can create meta-code for creating and selecting a sub-set of variables to provide to the compiler to use.
I wrote a COBOL source analyzer to categorize and report on the data elements used in a given program with the option to load them into a data dictionary. It reported on obvious bugs, such as multiply-defined attributes for the same data element name.
Nonsense. C# or yer a dolt.