221

[DISCUSS] IBM using LLMs to convert COBOL to Java (techcrunch.com)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by bahmanm@lemmy.ml to c/technology@lemmy.ml

116 comments fedilink hide all child comments

It's not the 1st time a language/tool will be lost to the annals of the job market, eg VB6 or FoxPro. Though previously all such cases used to happen gradually, giving most people enough time to adapt to the changes.

I wonder what's it going to be like this time now that the machine, w/ the help of humans of course, can accomplish an otherwise multi-month risky corporate project much faster? What happens to all those COBOL developer jobs?

Pray share your thoughts, esp if you're a COBOL professional and have more context around the implication of this announcement 🙏

(page 2) 50 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[-] autotldr@lemmings.world 3 points 1 year ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

For large organizations, it tends to be a complex and costly proposition, given the small number of COBOL experts in the world.

When the Commonwealth Bank of Australia replaced its core COBOL platform in 2012, it took five years and cost over $700 million.

Running locally in an on-premises configuration or in the cloud as a managed service, Code Assistant is powered by a code-generating model, CodeNet, that can understand not only COBOL and Java but around 80 different programming languages.

A recent Stanford study finds that software engineers who use code-generating AI systems similar to it are more likely to cause vulnerabilities in the apps they develop.

“Like any AI system, there might be unique usage patterns of an enterprise’s COBOL application that Code Assistant for IBM Z may not have mastered yet,” Puri said.

IBM sees a future in broader code-generating AI tools, as well — intent on competing with apps like GitHub Copilot and Amazon CodeWhisperer.

The original article contains 734 words, the summary contains 159 words. Saved 78%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[-] HubertManne@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago

Im sorta excited for stuff like this to get going in terms of video games. There are some great games and it would be great if it was easier to pull it into a more modern engine or such.

[-] HowMany@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

So a 'compiler' then? From a fairly straightforward easy to use COBOL to whatever. makes sense. can the new code work in the mainframe environment? or is that what this piracy is about?

har har har.

[-] Duamerthrax@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

Though previously all such cases used to happen gradually, giving most people enough time to adapt to the changes.

The Luddites would like to have a word with you.

[-] MinekPo1@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Something I found is that LLM struggle with weirder cases, when it comes to code.

I once tried getting ChatGPT (though admittedly only 3.5) to ~~generate code in~~ understand SaHuTOrEPoL, which is one of the more esoteric languages I created, and it really struggled with it.

[-] SheeEttin@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Probably because it wasn't trained on it. That's not any different from asking the same of a human.

load more comments (1 replies)

[-] FaceDeer@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Why would you expect ChatGPT to know how to write code in a language that you created yourself? According to that repository you created it last year, and ChatGPT was only trained on data up to 2021 so there's no way it could have been in its training set. Even though AIs have surprised us with their insights in a lot of cases they aren't magical.

[-] MinekPo1@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 1 year ago

Admittedly, I worded my comment poorly. What I meant is that ChatGPT struggled with understanding the semantics and structure of the language.

As an example, try from this this code block

$S__ do
S__-m__w("Hello world!") do

You can, hopefully guess that S__ is a variable which has a method m__w, accessed by using a hyphen, rather than a dot and statements end using a do keyword. ChatGPT missed on all marks.

[-] BitSound@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Have you tried including the docs in the prompt as well? I wouldn't have guessed that S__ is a variable in your example, but I would've known that after reading the docs. I'd expect ChatGPT to at least do OK if it had access to the docs.

load more comments (1 replies)

[-] LeylaLove@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

I don't think the LLM is gonna do that great of a job with it for this reason, but still worth giving a shot. ChatGPT is a well trained coding chimp. You realistically could get a well trained chimp to start off a lot of projects and have people finish it. The fact that it can correct itself after you explain how it's wrong is very powerful as well.

LLM isn't gonna be useful for converting a single program from COBOL to Java, it is gonna be useful for converting many programs from COBOL to Java. I bet IBM is trying this on their own shit first before they try to sell it to customers, because language conversion software would be a HUGE but very boom based money.

[-] MinekPo1@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

As I stated on a different comment in this thread, I worded my comment poorly. Why I think this is relevant however that, at least in this case, if an LLM get code which is significantly different from what its trained with, it can make wildly incorrect guesses. While here its because of a language with a... unique syntax, I think this could also be the case for code with a lot of technical debt or weird design decisions.

[-] LeylaLove@hexbear.net 2 points 1 year ago

Yeah, I don't think this will be as good as we want. The amount of technical debt I'd expect in these big programs would be off the charts. It would take a full team of people just to feed in corrections, and they would need to both know COBOL and be willing to kill all the COBOL jobs to do it. It's a tough ask

I'm still optimistic though because it's IBM and converting between languages is a billion dollar question. I don't think IBM would do a truly irresponsible deployment of such big corporate changes. I'd expect IBM to do a LOT of testing before sending anything out that would actually change the world, such as banking software. But in could be wrong.

load more comments (1 replies)

[-] nomadjoanne@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

This might be a stupid question, but how is this different from cross compilers? Is it more natural and readable?

load more comments (2 replies)

load more comments

this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2023

221 points (96.6% liked)

Technology

35152 readers

194 users here now

This is the official technology community of Lemmy.ml for all news related to creation and use of technology, and to facilitate civil, meaningful discussion around it.

Ask in DM before posting product reviews or ads. All such posts otherwise are subject to removal.

Rules:

1: All Lemmy rules apply

2: Do not post low effort posts

3: NEVER post naziped*gore stuff

4: Always post article URLs or their archived version URLs as sources, NOT screenshots. Help the blind users.

5: personal rants of Big Tech CEOs like Elon Musk are unwelcome (does not include posts about their companies affecting wide range of people)

6: no advertisement posts unless verified as legitimate and non-exploitative/non-consumerist

7: crypto related posts, unless essential, are disallowed

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

MinutePhrase@lemmy.ml