What was the training data? While there are open source projects for mainframes, most high-quality and battle-tested COBOL code bases are likely proprietary.
Also, will it be trained on the code base it sees? Most companies would be opposed to sharing their IP.
Edit: according to the website, the model won't be trained with your data.
That’s what we’ve seen with our customers. Some have only one or two COBOL developers left in some teams, and they are often the only people with the operational knowledge needed to keep these systems running.
They are either past retirement or about to retire in the coming years.
> Mainframes still run a surprising amount of critical infrastructure: banking, payments, insurance, airlines, government programs, logistics, and core operations at large institutions. Many of these systems are decades old, but they continue to process enormous transaction volumes because they are reliable, secure, and deeply embedded into business operations.
It saddens me when companies abandon them, it takes so much effort to replicate their power. I often wonder why mainframes never had a more modern easier to maintain and manage programming language designed for them.
Built by leading minds behind the world's most advanced AI and technology - Our team unites top researchers, engineers, and strategists from pioneering companies and institutions [...]
Please consider adding more background of the executive and heads of department on the about page to help us understand who these top researchers, engineers, and strategists are.
There are currently no names on the about page, not even the co-founders, however this claim that "our team unites top researchers, engineers, and strategists from pioneering companies and institutions" appears on multiple pages on the website.
It seems:
* Sai was an Apple machine learning engineer for 19 months, then a Apple lead machine learning engineer for 17 months.
* Aayush was an Apple software engineer for 3 years, then an Apple senior software engineer for 8 months at Apple.
Hi! I agree we should have a profile page on website.
Btw, this is Aayush and I was at Apple for almost four years and Sai was there for three. And we have Kevin as our founding engineer who has almost a decade of experience and has worked at Cognition and Windsurf.
> And we have Kevin as our founding engineer who has [...] worked at Cognition and Windsurf.
Kevin was at Cognition as a software engineer for 9 months and Windsurf as a design engineer for 7 months.
Including company logos on the Hypercubic website because team members worked there for less then a year doesn't convey the endorsement of these companies I'd expect when I see their logo being used.
I came here to agree with this. You don't put IBM's logo on your page just because one of your team used to work there.
That gives off a bad signal to someone visiting your site.
Everyone's faking it till they make it but at the same time using a logo like that, which universally implies that you have some kind of relationship with that company or they are using your product, is not even faking it.
And that's ignoring the legal challenges you are up for if that company spots you doing it.
According to our software (which is, of course, imperfect), your account has repeatedly been posting AI-generated and/or AI-edited comments. If so, can you please not do that? It's not allowed here, and will eventually get your account banned.
The problem here is that people who understand these systems are all retiring. Majority of the devs are over 60 and there's simply not enough new talent coming in to replace them.
So the real challenge companies are facing is will there be enough people to safely maintain these systems in the next decade. If they do not, it means failures in credit card systems, airline reservations, insurance claims and more.
It sounds like they will still need to hire and train human talent who can understand the code, and evaluate and integrate outputs of AI systems that conform to the specific compliance and data retention requirements of these industries. And also people who can enforce said compliance, and a lot of other things. Sounds like a complex problem without a neat off-the-shelf solution
That is the current landscape today. Mainframe engineers are in high demand and good ones are paid quite well.
I've heard from a global bank, they have one mainframe developer in the team who is past 70. She manages a critical credit card service and gets paid in the upper end of 6 figures to work 20 hrs a week. She's the only one who knows that system. Lots of stories like this.
> Majority of the devs are over 60 and there's simply not enough new talent coming in to replace them.
Yawn this tired old yarn, again. Mainframe development was offshored from the US decades ago. These retiring cobol programmers simply don’t exist in numbers that matter. The market could be to the companies doing the offshore work, but they’ve been throwing bodies at this problem for a long time, maybe there’s a market there maybe not.
What was the training data? While there are open source projects for mainframes, most high-quality and battle-tested COBOL code bases are likely proprietary.
Also, will it be trained on the code base it sees? Most companies would be opposed to sharing their IP.
Edit: according to the website, the model won't be trained with your data.
US banks and creditors desperately need this yesterday.
That’s what we’ve seen with our customers. Some have only one or two COBOL developers left in some teams, and they are often the only people with the operational knowledge needed to keep these systems running.
They are either past retirement or about to retire in the coming years.
and now they moved to microservices chaos and need it more than ever.
Is this available to install on Hercules emulator for hobbyists? For people unfamiliar with Mainframes, check out the moshix youtube channel.
We don't currently support Hercules, but we are providing free access to a mainframe for people to try out.
Hopefully Llm while it may not allow immediately for like 100% ready to go financial services code
Maybe it gives us good tests ?
That alone for something on cobol might be worthwhile
> Mainframes still run a surprising amount of critical infrastructure: banking, payments, insurance, airlines, government programs, logistics, and core operations at large institutions. Many of these systems are decades old, but they continue to process enormous transaction volumes because they are reliable, secure, and deeply embedded into business operations.
It saddens me when companies abandon them, it takes so much effort to replicate their power. I often wonder why mainframes never had a more modern easier to maintain and manage programming language designed for them.
Built by leading minds behind the world's most advanced AI and technology - Our team unites top researchers, engineers, and strategists from pioneering companies and institutions [...]
https://www.hypercubic.ai/company
Please consider adding more background of the executive and heads of department on the about page to help us understand who these top researchers, engineers, and strategists are.
There are currently no names on the about page, not even the co-founders, however this claim that "our team unites top researchers, engineers, and strategists from pioneering companies and institutions" appears on multiple pages on the website.
It seems:
* Sai was an Apple machine learning engineer for 19 months, then a Apple lead machine learning engineer for 17 months.
* Aayush was an Apple software engineer for 3 years, then an Apple senior software engineer for 8 months at Apple.
Hi! I agree we should have a profile page on website.
Btw, this is Aayush and I was at Apple for almost four years and Sai was there for three. And we have Kevin as our founding engineer who has almost a decade of experience and has worked at Cognition and Windsurf.
> And we have Kevin as our founding engineer who has [...] worked at Cognition and Windsurf.
Kevin was at Cognition as a software engineer for 9 months and Windsurf as a design engineer for 7 months.
Including company logos on the Hypercubic website because team members worked there for less then a year doesn't convey the endorsement of these companies I'd expect when I see their logo being used.
I came here to agree with this. You don't put IBM's logo on your page just because one of your team used to work there.
That gives off a bad signal to someone visiting your site.
Everyone's faking it till they make it but at the same time using a logo like that, which universally implies that you have some kind of relationship with that company or they are using your product, is not even faking it.
And that's ignoring the legal challenges you are up for if that company spots you doing it.
BTW this sounds like a genius offering
Wait until Elon sees one of their products is called HyperLoop
[flagged]
According to our software (which is, of course, imperfect), your account has repeatedly been posting AI-generated and/or AI-edited comments. If so, can you please not do that? It's not allowed here, and will eventually get your account banned.
See https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#generated and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47340079.
Instead, write any text that you post to HN by hand. We want to hear you in your own voice: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu....
(This is not a ding against LLMs - they're incredible tools and we use them heavily ourselves. Just not to replace human-to-human conversation.)
If it ain't broke, don't fix it. So letting an LLM loose on a mainframe is like letting a fox into a henhouse. :)
The problem here is that people who understand these systems are all retiring. Majority of the devs are over 60 and there's simply not enough new talent coming in to replace them.
So the real challenge companies are facing is will there be enough people to safely maintain these systems in the next decade. If they do not, it means failures in credit card systems, airline reservations, insurance claims and more.
It sounds like they will still need to hire and train human talent who can understand the code, and evaluate and integrate outputs of AI systems that conform to the specific compliance and data retention requirements of these industries. And also people who can enforce said compliance, and a lot of other things. Sounds like a complex problem without a neat off-the-shelf solution
Correct, they are retiring, for sure.
The last thing I’d ever put into mission-critical systems is an LLM.
So let’s hope it’s a mainframe sandbox so future COBOL programmers can learn on it. :)
In any case, COBOL systems work precisely because no one is constantly tinkering with them to “add a new framework”.
The last time I saw, someone made a “Hello World” app in Electron, and it was 220 MB.
Howgh.
Wouldn't the lack of supply drive up wages until more new talent is incentivized?
That is the current landscape today. Mainframe engineers are in high demand and good ones are paid quite well.
I've heard from a global bank, they have one mainframe developer in the team who is past 70. She manages a critical credit card service and gets paid in the upper end of 6 figures to work 20 hrs a week. She's the only one who knows that system. Lots of stories like this.
> Majority of the devs are over 60 and there's simply not enough new talent coming in to replace them.
Yawn this tired old yarn, again. Mainframe development was offshored from the US decades ago. These retiring cobol programmers simply don’t exist in numbers that matter. The market could be to the companies doing the offshore work, but they’ve been throwing bodies at this problem for a long time, maybe there’s a market there maybe not.