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

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127 points Anon84 | 2 comments | 03 Dec 23 16:31 UTC | HN request time: 0.433s | source
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discmonkey ◴[03 Dec 23 17:18 UTC] No.38508712[source]▶
Classic misunderstanding of programming languages. The only thing stopping cobol from being "known" is these companies paying for it.
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mlhpdx ◴[03 Dec 23 17:44 UTC] No.38508990[source]▶
It’s more than that. If you spend a couple or more years learning to maintain those systems, where else will you work? Will you find a co-founder or investor for a COBOL based system when you go “entrepreneur”? Maybe, but it better be a damn strong niche.

Not moving forward with the software industry is a weird kind of conceit that separates these companies from the mainstream by far more than money.

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serallak ◴[03 Dec 23 18:27 UTC] No.38509434[source]▶
I don't think it'd take two years to learn cobol, it should be less than that.

But it will take much more than that to learn the gnarly codebase in use in those shops...

And that is a skill that is certainly not transferable.

replies(1): >>38510771 #
1. exhilaration ◴[03 Dec 23 21:06 UTC] No.38510771[source]▶
I don't think it'd take two years to learn cobol, it should be less than that.

There's a comment in this thread from a former consultant that completed a 4 week COBOL bootcamp before being sent to a client to write code!

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2. wombatpm ◴[03 Dec 23 22:27 UTC] No.38511384[source]▶
It’s not the language, it’s the business rules and history.

Why is this input file loaded and rechecked 3 times? Because 30 years ago a file load failed, breaking end of quarter reports. This was the fix: if we can read that file three times and it doesn’t change then we know it’s good