Anthropic and COBOL Code

A new artificial intelligence developed by Anthropic is capable of writing COBOL code, a programming language that is 67 years old. The news has had a significant impact on the stock value of IBM, whose shares have suffered a 13% drop, the worst in the last 26 years.

Market Impact

The collapse of IBM's stock highlights the continued importance of mainframe systems in many industries, despite the age of the technology. The ability of an AI to automate the maintenance and evolution of COBOL code could accelerate the transition to more modern architectures, or simply reduce the management costs of existing systems.

COBOL: A Lasting Legacy

COBOL (Common Business-Oriented Language) was developed in 1959 and is still widely used in critical business applications, especially in the financial and government sectors. Its longevity is due to its reliability and the vast amount of existing code. However, finding experienced COBOL developers is increasingly difficult, making automation via AI an interesting prospect.