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IBM Bob

Score8.3 out of 10

23 Reviews and Ratings

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What is IBM Bob?

IBM Bob is an AI-assisted development tool designed to support developers across the software development lifecycle. It helps interpret developer intent and provides assistance when working with real-world codebases by using contextual awareness of the surrounding project.

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Categories & Use Cases

IBM Bob Reviews

What users are saying about IBM Bob.
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Pros

  • Comprehensive code analysis and documentation for legacy systems
  • Streamlining development and testing processes (SDLC management)
  • Significant operational efficiency and time savings

Cons

  • Lack of transparency regarding internal Bobcoins expenditure and value

IBM Bob Review.

Incentivized
Alex Walter
CTSO in Corporate at A3J Group (11-50 employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We work with IBM Maximo on a daily basis. IBM Bob has helped us write automation scripts to address customer business requirements, develop integrations with third-party systems, and review and develop new features for our existing mobile application. It has given us an on-demand senior advisor to both review and create work.

Pros

  • Analyzes existing codebases for security risks.
  • Performs architectural reviews of existing codebases.
  • Develops new features and patterns.
  • Answers questions about how something works.
  • Generates documentation based on existing code.

Cons

  • Would like to see more personalization capabilities. Bob does a good job reading code and adapting to a given style, but there should be more specific personalization settings.
  • A more detailed understanding of how Bobcoins are spent would be welcome. This will help adapt to more efficient prompting.

Return on Investment

  • We've been able to grow our own development team from within as a result of using this technology. Team members who may not have been confident enough to meaningfully contribute to the existing codebase have now become high-output developers.
  • We've been able to grow an automated test suite to more thoroughly test our mobile application. What once took two weeks of manual regression testing can now be done in an afternoon.
  • Our documentation has improved considerably, giving the product a more polished feel. Product documentation had previously consistently lagged behind new feature development.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Claude Code

Other Software Used

IBM Maximo Application Suite, Microsoft Visual Studio Code, Microsoft SQL Server

Having IBM Bob as your software partner

Incentivized
Richard WesterikView profile
Principal Specialist in Information Technology at Simac IT NL bv (501-1000 employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I have been using IBM Bob for a variety of tasks and business problems, because it is quite versatile. My use ranges from simply rewriting programs (scripts) in another language, building custom scripts quickly to collect data and present it in human-readable form, or analyze data and draw conclusions from it. IBM Bob is quick to respond and easy to use.

Pros

  • Analyzing existing programs, explaining clearly what it does.
  • Rewriting programs in a more modern language and/or a much more modular design, adding lots of explanatory comments.
  • Analyzing large amounts of data, verifying assumptions are either true or false.
  • Improving my ability to write good prompts, by asking IBM Bob feedback about the prompt(s) I used.

Cons

  • In some cases, I asked IBM Bob to rewrite a Korn shell script in another language (Python), and it did so quickly. It's just the output looked different and didn't take some exceptions into account I had built in to the original script.
  • When I pointed out I wanted a "plug-in replacement", with some pointers for things to look for, it corrected those quickly. You do need to check its output (like with any AI).
  • Some colleagues had trouble signing up for IBM Bob (trials) if their e-mail address did not match their IBM ID etc. That process should be more clear, or foolproof.

Return on Investment

  • It lessened the dependency on me as 'the programmer' in the team. I usually had to write even the simplest of shell scripts for monitoring purposes. I just taught one of my colleagues to use IBM Bob to do it in a fraction of the time. He created it with two or three decent prompts. That saved him having to contact me and saved me time in creating it.
  • For the customer, this meant having the monitoring solution online within minutes, instead of days.
  • I asked IBM Bob to document a complex script that I wrote in ksh and rewrite it in Python. I can read Python but am not "fluent" in programming it. With the help of IBM Bob, I created a plug-in replacement of this tool within 1 day, which would normally have taken me weeks.
  • Also, the resulting tool runs 4 times faster than the original script.
  • A customer wanted to know if their suspicions were correct that, at certain times of the day, network traffic was slower. I had the systems (8 systems talking to each other) collect data every 30 seconds and fed the resulting .txt files into IBM Bob for analyzing, asking specific questions about time periods, inter- or intra datacenter traffic, etc. I first verified the details and examples it found in the data (to make sure it is correct) and asked it to generate a user-friendly report with a few tables.
  • That took less than 30 minutes to execute various queries until I was satisfied. It would have taken me days to analyze the data myself (and would probably missed some of the clues).

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Microsoft 365 Copilot and ChatGPT

Other Software Used

IBM AIX, IBM Storage Protect, IBM Power

Converting from 10 year old Java 8 to latest Java version.

Incentivized
Oscar DubbeldamView profile
CEO in Corporate at Migrato (11-50 employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

IBM Bob is being used as the enterprise software development tool for our Migrato Intelligent Content Classification (MICC) software suite. The MICC Software suite comprises 8 applications, developed in Java 8 over the last 10 years. We are constantly updating, enhancing, testing, and documenting this suite. The maintenance is taking longer and longer. We need to adopt new technologies in AI, agents, and automation. We intend that, over the coming months, we will migrate our Java 8 applications, begin the conversion, assess vulnerabilities, identify enhancement options, and create documentation for ourselves. The ultimate goal is that once this is done, we can start working on our new ideas.

Pros

  • Converting code from either script language, Python or Java 8, to either C++ or the latest Java version.
  • Make a plan of activities to be done.
  • Suggest options to enhance.
  • Check dependencies.

Cons

  • It's hard to start from scratch.
  • No idea how many Bobcoins are involved with a prompt.

Return on Investment

  • The ROI from converting our Installer app went from an initial estimate of 2 weeks to 3 days.
  • The testing of the finalized app, which had to communicate with an already existing app w, was difficult to implement and test.
  • Converting old scripts from a proprietary IDE was done instantly.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Claude Code

Other Software Used

Atlassian Bitbucket, Python IDLE, Atlassian Confluence

Bob - The Builder with AI

Incentivized
Saurabh Gupta
Principal Architect in Information Technology at Travelport (201-500 employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Leveraged Bob AI to experiment on 7 major enterprise initiatives including critical mainframe modernization, cloud migration strategies, and production microservices. All deliverables are production-ready with comprehensive documentation

Pros

  • Documentation and Explanation of code and flow
  • Technology Conversion and Migration
  • Cloud Migration
  • Assistance across multiple work every day

Cons

  • Keeping history of all tasks and work performed to be recalled
  • Integration to multiple project work tools like Confluence, Jira, Service Now etc.

Return on Investment

  • Increased efficiency and throughput
  • Learning & Supporting new skills and domain areas
  • One stop to all kind of questions

Usability

Alternatives Considered

GitHub Copilot and Microsoft Visual Studio Code

IBM Bob gets reviewed by a Maximo Consultant

Incentivized
Julio Cesar Perera RodriguezView profile
Senior Maximo Consultant in Research & Development at Interloc Solutions (51-200 employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I recently used Bob to consolidate several weeks' worth of fragmented build notes, wiring diagrams, configuration snippets, and troubleshooting discoveries into a single coherent document for our Maximo Visual Inspection (MVI) Electrical Breaker Status Demo Rig.

The documentation existed as two Word documents, multiple text files, and a collection of photos taken during the build — spread across a GitLab repository with no particular structure. I knew what needed to be done but dreaded the hours it would take. So I decided to hand the job to Bob, IBM's AI coding assistant.

Pros

  • Technical documentation
  • Coding
  • Humor

Cons

  • Local tool usage and repeated requests for authorizations to execute local actions

Return on Investment

  • Streamlined efficiency
  • Time savings
  • Overall correctness

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Google Gemini and ChatGPT

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