@nixCraft why would IBM sell you something which would cause them to earn less. Currently they earn a lot in license fees. The only license mode I am aware of, you pay for the one hour of maximum CPU usage of each month.
So IBM offers Java coprocessors that don't have license fees unless those coprocessors run at 100% and spill over to the main processor which earns IBM the fat paycheck. Because that's what happened at a previous employer
@nixCraft This forgets the elephant in the room about Java. Most COBOL users would trust AI to rewrite their code into something Oracle could charge them for a lot less than cardiac patients would allow pacemaker software to be rewritten by AI and then be a subscription service.
@nixCraft No it doesn't, it misses the point of why people use COBOL that Java doesn't address.
Also, the cost of error is way greater than just paying a COBOL dev to change a few lines every few months to years...
No sane company would migrate a "if this goes down for more than 5 minutes per year, the company doesn't exist anymore" application from COBOL to Java and almost certainly not via automated AI (nobody to blame/sue)
Okay, listen, despite IBM and AI's claims, banks are likely to wait to adopt COBIL to Java AI technology immediately due to the sensitive nature of money. It is more complicated. That code has existed since the 60s. You don't want to piss off those rich folks or mess with anyone's money. This is also your reminder to download and check your bank statements monthly so that if AI messed up data, you can go back and claim your money, at least in theory.
@nixCraft Honestly if they're going to apply generative AI to any area of programming, this seems ideal. There's tons of repetitive code out there, it's all formatted in pseudo-English, most of the folks who know how to maintain it are retiring, and they're having trouble finding new devs to take their place. Let's let ChatGPT maintain COBOL code while the humans create art and poetry!
@nixCraft No, you missed the point. It's not "you don't want to piss off", it's almost always "You cannot afford to screw this up or you're gone". It's way easier to start a new bank from scratch with newly written software then to change something that already works (using COBOL) to something new, when you whole organization depens on it...
These COBOL applications are load bearing and they're the lifeblood of these organizations...
@nixCraft working in FinTech has taught me that unless this is free banks really don’t want to pay to change something that works. Knowing IBM this won’t be cheap either.
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