Advancing Coding in Low-Resource Programming Languages
OpenAI, Monday, October 19th, 2026
OpenAI reports stronger model abilities for building and migrating code in languages like COBOL, Fortran and Visual Basic.
OpenAI says its latest model advances improve building and migrating software in low-resource languages such as COBOL, Fortran and Visual Basic.
These languages have little training data but support critical systems, and OpenAI notes COBOL underpins most ATM transactions.
The work responds to developer and enterprise feedback that coding models struggle with these languages.
OpenAI built two evaluations, including MultiLangBench, which tests building a SQLite-compatible database engine in 20 languages, plus a COBOL migration evaluation.