Days of Future Past/Rev L

 

IBM’s stock ended Monday as the worst-performing member of the S&P 500 following a disruptive AI announcement from Anthropic. Photo: Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

The sky is falling, the sky is falling. AI replaces COBOL and IBM is doomed.

 IBM fell 13.2% following a new blog post from Anthropic sharing that Claude Code can automate parts of the modernization process for common business-oriented language (COBOL), a high-level programming language developed specifically for business data-processing needs. The stock ended the day as the worst-performing member of the S&P 500 index.

Let's think about this as we're talking money, you know, the agreed upon lie on which civilization depends, something different from code driving gossip and so called nooze. This Chicken Little take also applies to Fortran as it too is an antique, difficult to code and not web savvy either but dig into the reality of these two stalwarts and one's take changes radically.

Illustration for the story "Chicken Little", 1916

The government report which introduced COBOL,
one of the world's most-used programming languages.

Cobol - Concise description - Gemini

COBOL (Common Business-Oriented Language) | The Financial Substrate

Primary Logic: Designed for Business Data Processing and massive file handling.

The 1% Truth: Its strength lies in Fixed-Point Decimal Arithmetic, ensuring that every fraction of a cent is accounted for without the rounding errors found in modern floating-point systems.

Hardware Floor: Optimized for Batch Processing and high-volume Mainframe Transactions; it is the "Big Iron" that manages the $3 quadrillion global payment circuit.

2026 Reality: Despite the "Anthropic Flirtation" with automation, COBOL remains  "Uncompromising" because its logic is deeply embedded in the Solid State reality of banking.

Fortran, a general-purpose, compiled imperative programming language

Fortran - Concise description - Gemini

 FORTRAN (Formula Translation) | The Scientific Constructor

Primary Logic: Designed for Numerical Computation and High-Performance Computing (HPC).

The 1% Truth: Its "Secret Sauce" is Array-Oriented Programming; Fortran handles massive multidimensional arrays with a Principle of Least Action that prevents the "Administrative Heat" of modern memory overhead.

Hardware Floor: It features Static Typing and No Pointer Aliasing, allowing compilers to optimize code to the physical limits of the silicon.

2026 Reality: It remains the base for the Top500 supercomputers and was the start point for CSG (Constructive Solid Geometry) math, the foundation for 3D computer graphics.

Something to think about don't you think? :)