When Anthropic announced that its Claude® Code tool could help “break the cost barrier” to COBOL modernization, markets reacted as if a long-standing enterprise problem had finally met its silver bullet. The prospect is compelling: AI that can rapidly map, analyze, and refactor decades-old code running mission-critical systems in banking, government, and airlines.
But moments like this often compress complexity into a single narrative. The story quickly became less about what AI is uniquely good at and more about what people hoped it might magically replace.
The truth is both simpler and more exciting: AI isn’t the end of software; it’s the beginning of a new era for it.
We’ve Never Been Here Before
We’re living through one of the most exciting moments in the history of software. There has never been a better time to work in this industry. AI is reshaping what’s possible, and the level of investment pouring into technology rivals some of the most transformative public infrastructure efforts in modern history.
