COBOL, a language over six decades old and mainly engineered by retired or deceased architects, still underpins hundreds of billions of lines of code in global production systems. IBM, keen on preserving these legacy functions on its Z mainframe systems, has embarked on an ambitious endeavor: rewriting this extensive COBOL codebase in Java. A few years ago, humans were tasked with this colossal undertaking, but now IBM is turning to AI to expedite the process.
Enter the IBM Watsonx Code Assistant, slated for release in Q4 of this year. This innovative tool aims to keep human expertise in the loop while leveraging generative AI to analyze, refactor, and test the new object-oriented code. Importantly, it’s not an all-or-nothing approach; IBM asserts that code generated by Watsonx should seamlessly interoperate with COBOL and specific Z mainframe functions.
Continue reading… “IBM’s Watsonx Code Assistant: Transforming Legacy COBOL with AI-Powered Java”