I worked full time maintaining a huge COBOL system in the 90s. Seeing how a massive code base could be elegantly structured around COBOL gave me a new respect for the language, and the original developers. I always felt a warm sense of pride every time I managed to improve upon their work.

It's not so much that languages are good or bad, it's developers that are. COBOL can be made elegant, Swift can be made ugly. Even driftwood can be made beautiful.