One needs to understand that today's Large Language Model AI tools like
ChatGPT, etc. are essentially driven by huge statistical databases
created from processing huge volumes of digital text using some
knowledge of sentence structure and words. Those tools can accept
English-language queries and use words and phrases in the query to
generate related-information responses with complete sentences and
paragraphs that have a high probability of of being relevant to the query.
Current AI does not "understand" the information it holds, nor does it
have a concept of "truth". Even if you program the AI using books on
COBOL grammar and semantics it won't "understand" COBOL. Even if you
feed it millions of lines of COBOL code it won't be able to deduce the
underlying purpose of the code. If there is an accurate description of
what the code does accompanying the code, it can associate that
description with a code segment; but if the description is inaccurate,
AI may also associate the code with that bad description. Inevitably
some of the code you might use to program the AI tool will contain bugs,
and AI will be equally content to supply buggy code examples.
If your object is to generate optimized Assembler code which accurately
replicates the behavior of a COBOL program, the best tool for that for
the foreseeable future is an optimizing COBOL compiler for your target
machine. Such compilers are already doing flow analysis just to
optimize loops and register usage, but I wouldn't call that "AI" in the
usual sense of that term. Perhaps a well-programmed AI tool would
suggest using a COBOL compiler if asked to convert a COBOL program to
assembler -- in fact that is basically the response given by the MS
Copilot tool when asked to perform that task for z-architecture;
although you can see hints of its lack of understanding in that in
includes in its response "IBM provides cataloged procedures (such
as*IEBCOMPR*and*IEBCOPY*) to simplify JCL coding for COBOL compilation",
where it includes gratuitous PROC examples that have nothing to do with
COBOL rather than giving the names of actual COBOL compiler PROCs.
Joel C. Ewing
On 2/22/24 11:09, Robley Lutz wrote:
I guess my question is, do we expect AI to look at COBOL code, and not
simply compile it, but analyze the flow, and output optimized Assembler
code? Will AI become the highly skilled Assembler programmer that I never
became?
On Thu, Feb 22, 2024 at 11:54 AM Tom Harper <
[email protected]> wrote:
Dave,
I was told the same thing 54 years ago when I starting working at
CalTrans. Managers would just be able to code in COBOL PROFITS = SALES -
EXPENSES and we would all be out of a job.
...
--
Joel C. Ewing
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