In a recent blog post, Mike Wright, CTO at Zumasys noted that the rise of AI has changed PICK MultiValue Modernization ultimately for the better.
AI assisted development has changed the economics of modernization. It does not remove the need for strong leadership, experienced teams, sound architecture, or careful planning. It does not make legacy modernization easy. But it does reduce the cost and effort of some of the hardest parts of the work, he writes.
The question was never whether languages including PICK BASIC could be completely translated to languages such as C#, Java, Go, or Rust, it was whether organizations would commit enough time, resources, and money toward completing that translation while ensuring nothing was left behind—this is where AI has flipped the script.
AI can help teams understand older systems faster. It can explain existing code, identify business rules, generate documentation, create test scenarios, and help translate functionality into newer platforms.
AI can reduce the time required to analyze and recreate important system behavior. That matters because many modernization decisions have historically been made before the full business case was ever explored, he said.
With tools such as GitHub Copilot, teams can move faster in systems that once required significant manual effort to understand and change. Work that previously felt too expensive or too risky may now be worth evaluating more seriously.
At Zumasys, GitHub Copilot is writing more OpenQM BASIC than C#, Vue.js and TypeScript. “That is powerful because it allows us to strategically decide when and where to move code without having to fear making sacrifices due to budget or time constraints,” Wright said.
The goal was never to preserve legacy technology for its own sake: The goal was to preserve business value while improving speed, flexibility, usability, and long-term maintainability. If AI can help organizations move valuable business logic into modern platforms faster, with more confidence and lower cost, then leaders should be willing to revisit strategies that once seemed settled, he said.
Legacy systems still deserve respect. They often contain the institutional knowledge that keeps a business running. For years, the safest advice was to modernize the edges and leave the core alone. Now, in some cases, the better business decision may be to modernize the core too.
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