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# Teaching GitHub Copilot COBOL: A Practical Guide to Agentic AI Legacy Modernization


- **Date:** Thursday, Jul 9, 2026
- **Time:** 13:00–15:00 (120 min)
- **Room:** Room Ulm (35 Seats)
- **Event:** World Congress 2026 Europe

## Description

Everyone talks about modernizing legacy systems. Few people actually open a COBOL codebase and do it. In this session, I will. Using real mainframe applications, I'll walk through how GitHub Copilot's agentic capabilities can help you understand, plan, and extend COBOL code you've never seen before. We'll start where every modernization project actually starts: figuring out what the code does. Using structured prompt workflows, we'll reverse engineer modules, discover data structures, trace transaction flows, and build a knowledge base that turns tribal knowledge into something an AI agent (and your team) can actually work with. Then we'll go further: planning and implementing a new feature, end to end, with Copilot doing the heavy lifting while we stay in the driver's seat. This isn't a "replace your mainframe overnight" talk. It's a grounded, hands-on look at what's possible right now when you combine spec-driven development with agentic AI. You'll leave with a repeatable approach to legacy discovery and modernization, and a realistic sense of where AI helps, where it struggles, and where you still need to know your stuff.

## Speakers

### [Julia Kordick](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/@julia-kordick)

Senior Software Global Black Belt at Microsoft
### [Laetitia Maar](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/@laetitia-maar)

Cloud & AI Apps Solution Engineer at Microsoft


## Related talks at this congress

- [GitHub Copilot: From Zero to Hero](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/events/world-congress-2026-europe/sessions/1002-github-copilot-from) — Lisa Becker, Tugdual Grall
- [When Agents Meet Legacy: Never Change a Running System](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/events/world-congress-2026-europe/sessions/1364-when-agents-meet) — Michael Friedrich
- [From COBOL to Java: How Developers Transition 60 Years of Legacy into Modern Java Services](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/events/world-congress-2026-europe/sessions/943-from-cobol-to-java) — Daniel Branski, Hergy Fongue, Jannis Eickenroth
- [Refactoring in the Age of AI](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/events/world-congress-2026-europe/sessions/1254-refactoring-in-the) — Dominik Srednicki, Elena Lucarelli