COBOL vs. AI: A Race Against the Clock

COBOL is Outdated and Needs to Be Modernized. But How?

COBOL was designed in 1959 as a revolutionary programming language for businesses. More than sixty years later, it’s still running at full speed: 95 percent of all ATMs and about 3 trillion dollars in daily financial transactions rely on this language. But COBOL has remained static in a rapidly evolving world, and that’s causing a difficult digital transformation, writes ITProToday.

Outdated Language That Still Does Its Thing

Many banks, governments, and insurers continue to cling to COBOL because it works well. Although companies like IBM want to modernize the mainframes, replacing these systems costs billions. This applies to both money and operational risks: what if thousands of databases or data are lost? According to Accenture, it would cost $1.57 trillion in America alone to modernize the mainframes. Such astronomical prices are not conducive to innovation.

AI Helps, Just Not with COBOL

AI enables modernization, faster development, and smarter code. Yet AI can’t do anything with COBOL. The reason? There’s hardly any digital documentation available. For new programming languages like Python and Java, you can find numerous manuals, forums, and sample code online. COBOL manuals are often in dusty archives, and code is in closed mainframes. That’s why AI models barely understand this language.