On Monday, the global technology community focused on a "new versus old" showdown. With Anthropic announcing a major breakthrough in its Claude Code tool, which can automate the transformation of old systems running the COBOL language, the long-dominant giant IBM saw its stock plummet 13.2%, closing at $223.35 per share, marking its largest single-day drop recently.
COBOL: The "Digital Relic" Supporting the World
As a product of the 1950s, COBOL remains the cornerstone of the underlying systems for global finance, aviation, and government sectors. According to data from Anthropic, approximately 95% of ATM transactions in the United States still run on COBOL. For a long time, maintaining and modernizing these systems has not only been extremely costly but also faced the awkward situation of an aging developer base and a lack of successors.
Claude Code: Precise Surgery, Curing "Technical Debt"
Anthropic stated that AI has reversed the logic dilemma of "costing more to renovate than to rewrite" old code. The core advantage of Claude Code lies in:
Automated Exploration: Instantly sorting out complex dependencies among thousands of lines of code, a task that might take human experts months.
Documentation Generation: Automatically generating complete workflow documentation for outdated systems lacking maintenance records.
Risk Identification: Accurately locating hidden "technical debt" risk points deep within the codebase.
Market Turmoil: AI Becoming the "Harvester" of Industry Valuation
The sharp decline in IBM's stock reflected investors' extreme concerns about traditional enterprises' digital transformation businesses being replaced by AI. So far this year, IBM's stock has fallen more than 24%.
This "AI disturbance" is not an isolated case. Last Friday, due to Anthropic releasing the code security scanning feature Claude Code Security
