There are hundreds of billions of lines of COBOL code running on production systems worldwide. That’s not ideal for a language over 60 years old and whose primary architects are mostly retired or dead.
IBM, eager to keep those legacy functions on its Z mainframe systems, wants that code rewritten in Java. It tried getting humans to do it a few years back, but now it has another idea. Yes, you guessed it: It’s putting AI on the job.
The IBM watsonx Code Assistant, slated to be available in Q4 this year, intends to keep humans in the mix, but with a push from generative AI in analyzing, refactoring, and testing the new object-oriented code. It’s not an all-or-nothing process, either, as IBM claims that watsonx-generated code should be interoperable with COBOL and certain Z mainframe functions.
This might be one of those cases where using “AI” actually makes sense and can be a meaningful tool for the relatively few COBOL programmers left trying to modernise COBOL codebases. I’m obviously not well-versed enough in any of this to make any objective statements, but it seems to make sense.
This going to be one of those things that’s a colossal waste of money.
Most of these ancient codebases are ancient because they cost a colossal amount of money to refactor and replace. Having an AI do it, balls it up, and then having a team of developers clean it up is just going to be even more of a waste of money.
IBM, COBOL, Java, AI.
No, nothing can go wrong there.