I Modernized an 80s ATM System in 3 Minutes with IBM’s Bob (Full Breakdown)
BBetter Stack
Computing/SoftwareManagementInternet Technology
Transcript
00:00:00Check this out.
00:00:01This is interesting.
00:00:02It didn't add any tests because this is typical for legacy mainframe applications that rely
00:00:07on manual testing or mainframe specific testing tools not present in the repository.
00:00:13This is Bob, IBM's new IDE, which they call your AI powered development partner.
00:00:20So a few months ago, I did a video on IBM's flagship granite models, and now they're pushing
00:00:25it to the next level by releasing a brand new IDE platform with a cute avatar and a ton
00:00:31of cool features, all powered by their granite models.
00:00:34In this video, we'll take a closer look at Bob, see how it works, test it out, and figure
00:00:39out if Bob is really the next autonomous architect we've all been waiting for.
00:00:45It's gonna be a lot of fun, so let's dive into it.
00:00:51So in a world of Claude codes, Geminis, codecs, and all other AI model harnesses, it begs
00:00:58the question, what makes Bob special or unique?
00:01:01Well, while most assistants are focused on vibe coding, which is basically just generating
00:01:06snippets as fast as possible, Bob is built for architectural governance.
00:01:11It's less about a single chat window and more about an agentic workflow that separates planning
00:01:17from execution.
00:01:18IBM specifically designed Bob to have a set of helpful features that let you carefully
00:01:23control different phases of your development cycles, like planning, coding, reviewing, etc.
00:01:30And you can see this in their mode picker at the very bottom of the chat.
00:01:34You have an ask mode for quick questions or code mode for implementation and a plan mode.
00:01:40And you can even create your own custom modes tailored to your needs.
00:01:44But one of my favorite features is their review mode.
00:01:48You can run a slash review command, and Bob uses its built-in security guardrails to scan
00:01:53for things like hard-coded secrets, injection risks, or weak OWASP practices.
00:01:59It even gives you a dedicated findings panel where you can triage issues similar to a professional
00:02:05security audit tool.
00:02:07But this one is built directly in your IDE.
00:02:09And if you prefer CLIs, you can also use it in the terminal with Bob Shell.
00:02:14And because IBM is one of the oldest tech companies out there and they have such deep
00:02:18roots in mainframe systems, Bob probably has a specialized understanding of older languages
00:02:24like COBOL.
00:02:25So I decided to put it up to the ultimate test.
00:02:28You know how everyone jokes that COBOL is one of the most ancient languages that still powers
00:02:33a lot of banking systems and ATM machines, and how everyone is terrified to touch the
00:02:38source code out of fear of breaking a global financial pipeline?
00:02:42Well, I've grabbed an open-source COBOL repository called zBank, and we're going to see if Bob
00:02:48can reverse engineer this legacy mainframe logic and autonomously modernize it into a
00:02:53functional Python app.
00:02:55So as soon as I open Bob for the first time, it will ask you to import your settings from
00:03:00other popular IDEs like VS Code.
00:03:03So I'm going to go ahead and do that.
00:03:04And now, once we're inside, we can see that it looks very similar to VS Code, but with
00:03:09a little cute Bob chat panel on the side.
00:03:12And here we can see that we can also choose one of the modes that we discussed earlier.
00:03:17Since I'm not planning a new project, I'm just going to go ahead with the code mode to ask
00:03:22Bob to start coding right away.
00:03:24And for the prompt, I've specified that Bob is a Python developer who's been tasked with
00:03:28modernizing the old COBOL ATM machine stack and turn it into a nice clear web app powered
00:03:34by Streamlit with a good looking UI.
00:03:37And before Bob starts writing the code, it displays a very detailed auto approval model.
00:03:43And this is a nice touch because here you can specify exactly what the agent is allowed
00:03:47to do without your permission.
00:03:49And let's be real, I think most of the time we're just hitting auto approval all the time.
00:03:53But here you can actually define a clear sandbox so you can pick and choose.
00:03:58But for this demo, I'm going to allow it to read and write files in our repo and then let
00:04:03it do its thing.
00:04:04So it took Bob roughly three minutes to finish the task and now let's spin up the app and
00:04:08see how it actually works.
00:04:10So we got this nice dark themed login page at the very start.
00:04:13And we can log in with the hard coded demo credentials to test it out.
00:04:18And the dashboard also looks quite decent, although the pop up text is too bright.
00:04:22So it does lack a bit of design judgment, but all the operations are functional.
00:04:27So overall, it did manage to successfully complete this task and modernize the COBOL stack.
00:04:33And now I want to try the review function.
00:04:35This will force Bob to do a full audit of the codebase and find any potential security issues.
00:04:42Once we run this, we now see that there's a new Bob findings panel, which just popped
00:04:46up, where we can examine each issue in more detail.
00:04:49And if we click on one of the issues, you can see that there's also this handy light bulb
00:04:54button.
00:04:55And if we click that, Bob will automatically go ahead and try to fix this issue on its own.
00:05:00And not only that, but after fixing it, it also asks if we want to add a dedicated unit
00:05:05test for that specific issue.
00:05:08So let's go ahead and click that.
00:05:10And now we can see that Bob adds additional tests and executes them to double check that
00:05:15the issue is indeed fixed.
00:05:17And here we can also see the diff logs of the changes Bob made.
00:05:21Let's try another issue.
00:05:22This one is interesting.
00:05:23It detected a potential race condition issue.
00:05:26So let's click on the light bulb and try to fix that one.
00:05:29Oh, wow.
00:05:30The fix for this is actually a one liner change to add a begin immediate command for proper
00:05:35locking in SQLite.
00:05:37Pretty nice.
00:05:38So now again, we can let it fix it and then ask it to add proper tests for it to make sure
00:05:43that the issue is properly handled.
00:05:46And there's one last thing I want to check.
00:05:47So I'm going to open a new copy of this repository without our Python changes.
00:05:52And I want to run the review command on the original COBOL implementation to see if it
00:05:57finds any potential issues.
00:05:59And look at that.
00:06:00It found eight issues.
00:06:02So it can confidently identify critical bugs, even in such old languages as COBOL.
00:06:08And I don't I don't understand what's going on here.
00:06:10But let's just try and fix one of these issues.
00:06:12And once again, after fixing it, Bob asks if we want to add dedicated tests to it.
00:06:19So let's click yes.
00:06:20And check this out.
00:06:21This is interesting.
00:06:23It didn't add any tests because this is typical for legacy mainframe applications that rely
00:06:28on manual testing or mainframe specific testing tools not present in the repository.
00:06:33Wow.
00:06:34So I guess this is such an ancient stack that they didn't even test it automatically back
00:06:39then.
00:06:40So there are probably no testing frameworks for COBOL that exists in the wild.
00:06:45So that is pretty interesting.
00:06:47But anyway, there you have it, folks.
00:06:49That is Bob in a nutshell.
00:06:51Now this might be a hot take, but I honestly really like using IDEs opposed to CLIs where
00:06:57I don't understand what the agent is doing most of the time.
00:07:00I really value the fact that such a tool like Bob has separate panels and UI controls for
00:07:06things like approvals or review findings.
00:07:09I find that it provides a much more structured way of working within code bases and splitting
00:07:15tasks and having a full picture of what's actually going on.
00:07:19So if you want to try Bob for yourself, they do provide a free trial that includes 40 Bob
00:07:24coins to spend.
00:07:25And for comparison, the test we just did there cost around four Bob coins and one Bob coin
00:07:30is equivalent to 50 cents USD.
00:07:33So what do you think about Bob?
00:07:34Have you tried it?
00:07:35Will you use it?
00:07:36Let us know in the comment section down below.
00:07:38And folks, if you like these types of technical breakdowns, please let me know by smashing
00:07:42that like button underneath the video.
00:07:44And also don't forget to subscribe to our channel.
00:07:47This has been Andris from Betterstack, and I will see you in the next videos.