←back to thread

Watsonx: IBM's code assistant for turning COBOL into Java

(www.pcmag.com)
127 points Anon84 | 4 comments | 03 Dec 23 16:31 UTC | HN request time: 0.609s | source
Show context
pard68 ◴[03 Dec 23 17:55 UTC] No.38509106[source]▶
I work for a company that develops and maintains code that "no one knows anymore" which helps run the US banking system. This article is ill informed fear mongering and the proposed "solution" is a joke.
replies(1): >>38509397 #
1. rabuse ◴[03 Dec 23 18:22 UTC] No.38509397[source]▶
Care to elaborate on this a bit? Some details would've been useful rather than just a "no u" comment.
replies(2): >>38510238 #>>38511290 #
2. jacquesm ◴[03 Dec 23 20:03 UTC] No.38510238[source]▶
It's spot on. This is such a crazy end run around the real issue that it won't solve anything, it replaces COBOL that apparently the people that need this don't understand with Java that they also won't understand because it will be translated from idiomatic COBOL, which has about as much to do with Java as it does with Prolog, Visual Basic or C. You'd need to be an expert in both Java and COBOL to make soup of it.
replies(1): >>38514797 #
3. pard68 ◴[03 Dec 23 22:18 UTC] No.38511290[source]▶
There isn't much to elaborate on. We are not hard up for COBOL or RPG devs, I'm sure some municipalities are but they are probably hard up for anyone who has the skills to make six figures.

COBOL is used still for far more reasons than technical debt, there is good reason for the language and I doubt Java is even capable of replacing it. Even if an AI could write a 100% perfect Java version of COBOL, Java would fall flat on its face. COBOL and other languages like it are very performant languages, optimized over more than a half century.

4. Closi ◴[04 Dec 23 08:02 UTC] No.38514797[source]▶
And presumably this is why it requires an LLM rather than a transcompiler.

You want to translate 'idiomatic COBOL soup' which has been added to over decades into clean structured (possibly OOP) code covered by a robust library of tests.