February 23, 2026
COBOL vs YOLO, fight!
IBM Plunges After Anthropic's Latest Update Takes on COBOL
Stock tanks, traders yell “buy the dip” as AI pokes grandpa code and bankers panic
TLDR: Anthropic says its AI can help update old banking code (COBOL), and IBM stock slid as investors feared its maintenance empire could be disrupted. Commenters split between “don’t YOLO our banks” caution, cheeky short-seller theories, and dip-buying bravado—mixing real outage fears with classic market theater.
IBM shares slid after a Bloomberg ping sent investors sprinting to Claude’s post about using AI to tackle COBOL—the dusty-but-dependable language running ATMs, airlines, and government systems. Cue the comment section turning into Wall Street vs. Mainframes: half panic, half popcorn.
The loudest chorus? “Don’t YOLO our banks.” One engineer snarked that banks stick with COBOL because it’s boring and reliable—then joked management wants to “YOLO some vibe code” into the next release. Others piled on with a real-world scare: a commenter flagged a Colombia payments outage tied to IBM maintenance, calling it a lesson in “single-vendor risk.” Translation for civilians: if one big tech provider hiccups, your paycheck might take a nap.
Meanwhile, the traders showed up with their playbook. One winked that February’s been “sell, spook retail, buy the dip, repeat,” while another floated the spicy idea that if Anthropic’s CEO had bet against IBM, he’d have “made billions.” It’s equal parts conspiracy theory and meme market.
Also brewing: “Where’s IBM and Oracle’s own AI?” Some readers think Big Blue and Big Red should have rolled out rival models yesterday. Others say AI could finally translate decades of spaghetti code without blowing up the lights. Either way, the vibe is clear: grandpa code just met the AI hype train—and the comments brought the fireworks.
Key Points
- •Anthropic’s blog outlines AI-assisted strategies for modernizing COBOL systems using Claude and Claude Code.
- •COBOL is described as pervasive, handling an estimated 95% of U.S. ATM transactions and running billions of lines in production.
- •The article cites a skills shortage and outdated documentation as major obstacles to COBOL modernization.
- •Recommended approach: start with a bounded component, use AI for analysis and documentation, implement incrementally with testing and validation.
- •IBM’s stock fell intraday by about $15, briefly below $230, as the market reacted to the AI modernization narrative.