Watsonx Code Assistant for Z

2023: Product Announcement

On August 22, 2023, IBM announced the Watsonx Code Assistant for Z^[1] artificial] intelligence tool for automated translation of code from the ancient Cobol programming language into Java.

Cobol, or Common Business-Oriented Language, was developed back in 1959 for business and production applications. As of 2022, more than 800 billion lines of code in the language were used in various systems around the world. For comparison: in 2017, the number of such lines was estimated at 220 billion. However, Cobol is quite difficult to use, and the number of qualified programmers who know this language is small. Therefore, many companies and organizations face difficulties maintaining their Cobol systems. IBM's new product solves the problem.

Watsonx Code Assistant for Z Translates COBOL into Java

Watsonx Code Assistant for Z is designed for IBM Z-series mainframes. You can use AI tools locally or through the cloud. The tool is based on the CodeNet code generation model, which can understand not only Cobol and Java, but also about 80 other programming languages. The CodeNet platform is trained on a huge amount of data and has 20 billion parameters.

Generative AI will help developers evaluate, update, validate and test code faster. This will allow more efficient modernization of applications, as well as provide an opportunity to focus on more important tasks, says IBM.

The advent of Watsonx Code Assistant for Z means that the number of specialists capable of servicing the software of many private and public organizations will increase significantly. And this will ensure faster elimination of emerging problems, which, ultimately, will have a positive effect on consumer service in many industries.^[2]

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