IBM taps AI to translate COBOL code to Java | TechCrunch
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IBM's new product offering, Code Assistant for IBM Z, leverages a generative AI model to translate COBOL code to Java.

It’s not the 1st time a language/tool will be lost to the annals of the job market, eg VB6 or FoxPro. Though previously all such cases used to happen gradually, giving most people enough time to adapt to the changes.

I wonder what’s it going to be like this time now that the machine, w/ the help of humans of course, can accomplish an otherwise multi-month risky corporate project much faster? What happens to all those COBOL developer jobs?

Pray share your thoughts, esp if you’re a COBOL professional and have more context around the implication of this announcement 🙏

  • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
    11·
    1 year ago

    And doing it manually is probably cheaper in the long run, especially considering that COBOL tends to power some very mission critical tasks, like financial systems.

    The process should be:

    1. set up a way to have part of your codebase in your new language
    2. write tests for the code you’re about to port
    3. port the code
    4. go to 2 until it’s done

    If you already have a robust test suite, step 2 becomes much easier.

    We’re doing this process on a simpler task of going from Flow (JavaScript with types) to TypeScript, but I did a larger transition from JavaScript to Go and Ruby to Python using the same strategy and I’ve seen lots of success stories with other changes (e.g. C to Rust).

    If AI is involved, I would personally use it only for step 2 because writing tests is tedious and usually pretty easy to review. However, I would never use it for both step 2 and 3 because of the risk of introducing subtle bugs. LLMs don’t understand the code, they merely spot patterns and that’s absolutely not what you want.