When it comes to computer programming languages, Javascript, Python and C++ are some of the top dogs.
But with billions of lines of code in other languages still used by major corporations, what happens when the engineers that wrote them retire?
Take COBOL for example.
The language is still used at many large banks and financial institutions, though its authors are creeping up in age and the popularity of teaching it is diminishing, Phase Change COO Steve Brothers said.
As this knowledge-base departs the workforce, maintaining upkeep and control of applications becomes increasingly difficult. Developers are forced to wade through unfamiliar code, searching for fixes to problems they were previously unaware of.
In an effort to save developers time when dealing with challenging code, Golden’s Phase Change is creating an AI coworker that understands the code they’re struggling with.
The company’s platform, COBOL Colleague, helps developers quickly and efficiently find potential bugs in COBOL code.
Developers can ask the AI specific questions to help reduce the potentially bugged lines of code to the smallest amount. Rather than dealing with tens of millions of lines of code and spending weeks searching for a bug, they’ll have a curated search of potential problem areas.
“What the customer is getting is an agent that behaves as though they are a subject matter expert,” Brothers said, adding that COBOL Colleague can make engineers at least seven times more efficient.
The 25-person startup, which is now almost 15 years old, has pivoted throughout its lifestyle between think-tank work and product development. Now, Phase Change is heads-down on finishing COBOL Colleague before the end of 2020.
As they work with beta customers and put the finishing touches on the platform over the next six months, Brothers said COBOL Colleague’s initial target market will be the industries that still rely on this language.
“Our initial target market is largely banks, financial institutions and insurance companies that are still running this software,” Brothers said.
Although the company’s first platform focuses on COBOL, Brothers said Phase Change’s core technology has the ability to match with any coding language.
“We can handle any language at its core, so we’ll have an opportunity to scale into multiple markets at a time,” he said.
With a seemingly endless number of programming languages and an ever-growing challenge to keep up, Brothers said any developer would have use for the platform’s intelligence.
“Our goal is not to replace software developers, but rather to augment intelligence,” he said. “We want to let humans do what they’re good at it, which is be creative, and let computers do what they’re best at.”
