A Perfect Plan: Mainframes Will Live Forever
September 7, 2023
Note: This essay is the work of a real and still-alive dinobaby. No smart software involved, just a dumb humanoid.
Experienced COBOL programmers are in high demand and short supply, but IBM is about to release an AI tool that might render that lucrative position obsolete. The Register reports: “IBM Says GenAI Can Convert that Old COBOL Code to Java for You.” Dubbed the watsonx Code Assistant for Z, the tool should be available near the end of this year. Reporter Dan Robinson gives us a little background:
“COBOL supports many vital processes within organizations globally – some that would surprise newbie devs. The language was designed specifically to be portable and easier for coding business applications. The good news is that it works. The bad news is it’s been working for a little long. COBOL has been around for over 60 years, and many of the developers who wrote those applications have since retired or are no longer with us. ‘If you can find a COBOL programmer, they are expensive. I have seen figures showing they can command some of the highest salaries because so many mission critical apps are written in COBOL and they need maintenance,’ Omdia Chief Analyst Roy Illsley told us.
Migrating the code to Java means there are many more programmers around, he added, and if the apps run on Linux on Z then they can potentially be moved off the mainframe more easily in future.”
Perhaps. There are an estimated 775 to 850 billion lines of COBOL code at work in the business world, and IBM is positioning Code Assistant to help prioritize, refactor, and convert them all into Java. There is just one pesky problem:
“IBM is not the only IT outfit turning to AI tools to help developers code or maintain applications, however, the quality of AI-assisted output has been questioned. A Stanford University study found that programmers who accepted help from AI tools like Github Copilot produce less secure code than those who did not.”
So maybe firms should hold on to those COBOL programmers’ contact info, just in case.
Cynthia Murrell, September 7, 2023
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