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

(www.pcmag.com)
127 points Anon84 | 2 comments | 03 Dec 23 16:31 UTC | HN request time: 0.412s | source
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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 #
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 #
1. 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 #
2. 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.