title: Why does COBOL have to be indented?
body: <p>Why does COBOL have to be indented, as in, have additional spacing in each sourcefile?</p>
  
  <p>Consider this code (note the additional whitespace):</p>
  
  <pre><code>  IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.
    PROGRAM-ID. HELLO-WORLD.
    PROCEDURE DIVISION.
        DISPLAY 'Hello, world'.
        STOP RUN.
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>A similar formatting can be seen in Fortran code: </p>
  
  <pre><code>   program hello
        print *, "Hello World!"
     end program hello
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>But why do COBOL and Fortran need this whitespace? What's the reason?</p>