• IBM Gets Bob 1.0 Off The Ground

  March 2, 2026 Alex Woodie

  IBM this month finally will get a coding co-pilot into the hands of its IBM i installed base with the launch of Bob. The general availability of Bob 1.0.0 on March 24 will mark the end of the long wait for IBM i customers – and in particular, the large population of RPG developers – to start using IBM-branded AI software to maintain and develop IBM i software.

  The world of generative AI moves quickly, as the large language models (LLMs) from frontier providers improve on a weekly, if not daily, basis. This is both exciting, as the capabilities of …

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• Profound Says New Agentic AI Dev Tool Delivers Huge Productivity Boost

  January 19, 2026 Alex Woodie

  Profound Logic is rolling out a new AI-powered development tool that it says will increase the productivity of individual developers by five to 10 times. Dubbed CoderFlow, the software coordinates the work of multiple AI agents to assist with the development new IBM i applications or the maintenance and modernization of existing ones.

  Existing AI copilots provide some productivity gains for developers working in an IDE, somewhere around 20 percent, according to Profound Logic chief executive officer Alex Roytman. But CoderFlow is a different type of product. It is not a coding co-pilot, he said. Instead it is a framework …

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• Guru: A First Look at Bob, The IBM i Assistant That’s Closer Than You Think

  December 8, 2025 Gregory Simmons

  I recently was granted early access to IBM’s new Project Bob, and I have been putting the Bob-IDE through its paces to understand what IBM is aiming for and what IBM i developers should expect as the offering matures. Bob is IBM’s emerging AI-powered development assistant and IDE ecosystem designed to modernize how developers work on the IBM i.

  One of the first things that stands out is that the Bob-IDE is not an extension like the older WCA4i project, which was in extension form. IBM learned a lot from that experience, and those lessons led them to take a …

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• Bob More Than Just A Code Assistant, IBM i Chief Architect Will Says

  December 1, 2025 Alex Woodie

  When IBM i professionals finally get their hands on Bob, the new AI-powered tool currently in development in Big Blue’s labs, they will find that it is much more than just a code assistant, IBM i chief Architect Steve Will said recently. “It has a lot of knowledge,” he said. “It knows things about IBM i.”

  While precise details about the timing of the release of Bob are slim, IBM is widely expected to release a public preview of the new AI-powered plug-in for VS Code in early 2026. The new software, which was unveiled in early October around the …

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• IBM Pulls The Curtain Back A Smidge On Project Bob

  October 20, 2025 Alex Woodie

  We learned last week that Project Bob is in at IBM, and Watson Code Assist for IBM i is out. IBM is gung-ho about the prospects for Bob to function as a do-it-all, AI-powered junior programmer for all of its platforms. But what exactly does this entail for IBM i customers? IT Jungle talked to IBM i chief architect Steve Will to get some answers.

  When IBM eventually ships the AI code assistant that is currently called Project Bob, it will offer a range of AI-powered functionality for all IBM customers, including IBM i shops, mainframe customers, and Linux and …

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• You Can Now Get IBM Tech Support For VS Code For i

  August 11, 2025 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops that were on the fence about migrating from Rational Developer for i and adopting VS Code for RPG and COBOL development just received one big reason why they should bite the bullet and make the move: the launch of a new technical support package for Code for i from IBM.

  Visual Studio Code is currently the most popular integrated development environment (IDE) on planet Earth, according to multiple measures, such as the Stack Overflow’s 2025 Developer Survey, which found Microsoft VS Code was used by 76 percent of all respondents, more than twice the usage of …

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• Liam Allan Shares What’s Coming Next With Code For IBM i

  June 23, 2025 Alex Woodie

  The rise of Code for IBM i arguably is the best IBM i technology story of the past few years. The VS Code development environment came out of nowhere to challenge Rational Developer for i as the pre-eminent developer tool on the platform. And according to Liam Allan, who started this whole thing, Code for i is only going to get better in the months and years to come.

  There is clear and unmistakable momentum behind VS Code and Code for IBM i, the VS Code plug-in that Liam Allan created back in 2021 while working at Seiden Group …

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• RPG Code Generation And The Agentic Future Of IBM i

  June 2, 2025 Alex Woodie

  IBM is making progress with Watsonx Code Assistant for i, which is on track to become available as a public preview next month. And while IBM perhaps is running into some challenges with generating RPG code, the long-term potential of agentic AI on IBM i is brighter than ever.

  As we previously reported, IBM is now taking names for the folks who will be given access to the public preview of WCA for i, which you can sign up for here. According to IBM i CTO Steve Will, the preview will deliver RPG code understanding capabilities, which is …

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• Public Preview For Watson Code Assistant for i Available Soon

  May 21, 2025 Alex Woodie

  At the COMMON POWERUp 2025 conference this week, IBM pulled the covers back a bit on Watson Code Assistant for IBM i, the new name for the AI-powered coding assistant that IBM first started talking about one year ago. A public preview of WCA for i is becoming available to a limited number of testers, with general availability expected in the second half of the year.

  There has been quite a bit of development in the IBM i coding co-pilot this month. On May 7, during the IBM Think conference, two IBM executives wrote a blog post announcing WCA for …

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• IBM Unveils Manzan, A New Open Source Event Monitor For IBM i

  May 5, 2025 Alex Woodie

  IBM developers have created a new open source event monitor for IBM i. Dubbed Manzan, the project, which was spearheaded by IBM i open source guru Jesse Gorzinski, promises to provide a versatile way to ingest and redistribute a variety of IBM i event data types to downstream tools, thereby consolidating event monitoring for a wide range of use cases behind a single pane of glass.

  There are no shortages of ways that users can monitor what is going on in their IBM i server. There are job logs to look at, message queues to inspect, and even stream files …

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