HypercubicCurrent role
COBOL Programmer & GTM · Hybrid
COBOL work alongside go-to-market, on contract. Hypercubic is a client, not a company I founded.
Juan Lucas Barbier.The COBOL Guy.
Youngest COBOL developer. Two years inside Volkswagen's mainframe modernization, two more co-founding COBOLpro to automate COBOL and RPG documentation.
Companies I've
worked in.
5 employers from Wolfsburg to San Francisco — mainframes, payments, and go-to-market.
- Hypercubic
- COBOLpro
- SaleADS
- Volkswagen
- Nftsbuilders
The COBOL track,
most recent first.
5 roles since Jan 2021. Dates, titles and places exactly as they read on LinkedIn — including the overlaps.
COBOLpro
Co-Founder · San Francisco Bay Area · Hybrid
Automating COBOL and RPG code documentation with AI. Founded as COBOLagency.
SaleADS
Back End Developer · Medellín · On-site
Built early versions of the payment-provider migration and the platform's video functionality, and acted as QA.
Volkswagen
COBOL Programmer · Wolfsburg, Germany · On-site
Two years on Volkswagen's mainframe modernization project in Wolfsburg. CICS, COBOL and JCL.
Nftsbuilders
Co-Founder · New York · Remote
Partnered with influencers on NFT projects. Sold over $5M.
Proof, and where it came from
5 of these are mine, out of the two years I spent co-founding COBOLpro. The other is the industry's, and is labelled — so you never have to guess which is which.
- Lines documented
60M+
Lines documented
COBOL and RPG across production systems, at COBOLpro
- Enterprises served
20+
Enterprises served
Banking, insurance, airline and public sector, through COBOLpro
- Faster analysis
90%
Faster analysis
Against manual code review of the same codebase
- Deterministic
99.9%
Deterministic
Static analysis over ANTLR grammars. The parser does not guess
- Cost reduction
70%
Cost reduction
Against a traditional consulting engagement
- Moved every day
$7T
Moved every day
By COBOL systems worldwide. This is the industry figure, not mine — it is why the work matters
- From COBOLpro's own delivery record, 2024–2026. Not independently published.
- An industry figure about COBOL, widely cited and not independently verified here.
On the record
Two years on Volkswagen's mainframe modernization
Cobol Programmer at Volkswagen in Wolfsburg, September 2022 to September 2024. CICS, COBOL and JCL, full-time and on-site.
See the profileCo-founded COBOLpro
Two years and one month as co-founder, May 2024 to May 2026, automating COBOL and RPG code documentation with AI. Founded as COBOLagency.
See the profile$5M+ sold at Nftsbuilders
Co-founded Nftsbuilders in January 2021 and partnered with influencers on NFT projects, selling over $5M before it wound down in August 2022.
See the profile4 COBOL repositories,
all of them mine.
Most of the account is forks of other people's work and technical tests I wrote for candidates. These 4 are mine, and have something in them.
COBOL ClarityEngine
COBOL in, searchable documentation out.
A working web application that ingests COBOL and returns documentation, dependency views and extracted business rules. React and Vite on the front, Express and Postgres behind it. By far the largest thing on this list — 141MB across COBOL, Java, TypeScript, Python, ANTLR and JCL — and the only one with a deployed demo. Built for the n8n hackathon.
COBOL CodeSense
Parse COBOL, map its dependencies, then ask it questions.
Python. Takes COBOL files or a ZIP archive, parses program structure and complexity, builds an interactive dependency graph, and puts a chat interface over the result. The most thoroughly documented repo of the four.
COBOL CodeSense — first cut
The same idea, earlier and half the size.
The first version of the analysis platform above, written for a GitHub hackathon. The parser, ingest and knowledge modules carried over into the later build almost unchanged. Kept here because the diff between the two is the more honest artefact.
COBOLpro — analysis core
The parsing and documentation core, on its own.
Python. The extraction and documentation logic pulled out of the product work and kept standalone. Small, undocumented, and included because it is genuinely his rather than because it is finished.
Still shipping
- Loading
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9 articles on COBOL modernization,
3M impressions in 2025.
Long-form on COBOL modernization. Ordered by how far each one actually travelled, not by date.
- Another Failed COBOL Modernization Project
- The Next Generation of Mainframe Engineers
- The Physics of Mainframe Data Gravity: Why CICS and VSAM Resist Lift-and-Shift
- COBOL in Global Financial Infrastructure: A Comprehensive Academic Analysis
- Advanced Strategies for Mainframe Data Modernization: Packed Decimals, EBCDIC and Copybook Migrations
- The Modernization Portfolio: Why Big Bang COBOL Rewrites Fail
- The Compliance Mandate for Mainframe Modernization
- Measuring the True Cost of Legacy Technical Debt: Beyond MIPS
- COBOL: The Backbone of Today's Industry
Who is Juan Lucas Barbier?
I am Juan Lucas Barbier — The COBOL Guy, and I work on the software that runs the world's oldest load-bearing systems. I spent two years inside Volkswagen's mainframe modernization in Wolfsburg, then two more co-founding COBOLpro to automate COBOL and RPG documentation with AI. Today I write COBOL and run go-to-market for Hypercubic on contract.
- COBOL, RPG, CICS, JCL
- Python, TypeScript, React, Express, PostgreSQL, ANTLR
- Static analysis, n8n, AI documentation, Dependency graphs
- IBM Mainframe Developer Professional Certificate · IBM
- IBM Certified System Programmer — COBOL · IBM
- IBM Certified Application Developer — COBOL · IBM
- IBM COBOL Basic Testing and Debugging · IBM
- 1000 Steps · Georgia Institute of Technology
- IBM COBOL Data and File Management · IBM
- IBM COBOL Basics · IBM
- Create X · Georgia Institute of Technology
Languages
- French
- Spanish
- English
- German
66 things,
64 of them connected.
Every other section is a query against this. Drag to turn it; tap a point to see what it connects to.
Read it as a list
Hypercubic
COBOLpro
SaleADS
Volkswagen
Nftsbuilders
IBM
Georgia Institute of Technology
COBOL
RPG
CICS
JCL
Python
TypeScript
React
Express
PostgreSQL
ANTLR
Static analysis
n8n
AI documentation
Dependency graphs
Mainframe modernization
Go-to-market
Quality management
Back end
Payments
Video
QA
Influencer marketing
Documentation
COBOL Programmer & GTM
Co-Founder
Back End Developer
COBOL Programmer
Co-Founder
IBM Mainframe Developer Professional Certificate
IBM Certified System Programmer — COBOL
IBM Certified Application Developer — COBOL
IBM COBOL Basic Testing and Debugging
1000 Steps
IBM COBOL Data and File Management
IBM COBOL Basics
Create X
COBOL ClarityEngine
COBOL CodeSense
COBOL CodeSense — first cut
COBOLpro — analysis core
Another Failed COBOL Modernization Project
The Next Generation of Mainframe Engineers
The Physics of Mainframe Data Gravity: Why CICS and VSAM Resist Lift-and-Shift
COBOL in Global Financial Infrastructure: A Comprehensive Academic Analysis
Advanced Strategies for Mainframe Data Modernization: Packed Decimals, EBCDIC and Copybook Migrations
The Modernization Portfolio: Why Big Bang COBOL Rewrites Fail
The Compliance Mandate for Mainframe Modernization
Measuring the True Cost of Legacy Technical Debt: Beyond MIPS
COBOL: The Backbone of Today's Industry
Two years on Volkswagen's mainframe modernization
Co-founded COBOLpro
$5M+ sold at Nftsbuilders
Lines documented
Enterprises served
Faster analysis
Deterministic
Cost reduction
Moved every day
Impressions in 2025