# IBM Bob 5 Hacker News commenters recommended IBM Bob and 52 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 2 of 13 months. **Verdict:** Recommended for enterprise cost control and IBM-specific tooling. Critics say it is a VS Code fork with weak security defaults and is not production-ready. ## What people warn about - Security and trust concerns (4 comments): "Users have been trained to do this, as shifting the burden to the user with no way to enforce bounds or even sensible defaults." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46546176)) "IBM got banned from Queensland gov contracts for 12 years, after the humans decided to secretly scan all legal docs" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49574873)) "setting up a secret message board and establishing a persistent foothold in an internal inference cluster" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49568292)) - Generic VS Code fork, no edge (4 comments): "Very little if anything of value since 2005+ that was actually IBM created. (Bob appears fully IBM created)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49570661)) "when I looked at it 6 months ago it was just a fork of vscode with old ass versions of Claude" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49568937)) "it looks like an IBM-mediocre version of every other LLM coding tool that currently exists" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47935794)) - Widely called poor quality (3 comments): "I couldn't think of a better signal to flee a job interview than seeing an IBM LLM cli on someone's screen." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46545944)) "IBM hasn't made a product that works since Db2 so I am fairly confident this is a flaming pile of garbage." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49564707)) "All of the best people I work with are using other tools because Bob is trash." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49572984)) - Opaque token and cost pricing (3 comments): "If only one could generate bobcoin using their GPU, only to use the bobcoin to use someone else's GPU." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49568805)) "transparent, predictable ... "a certain number of Bobcoins" ... so not that transparent then?" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49571401)) "They took a page from AWS on whatever the hell a Kiro token is supposed to represent." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49571602)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [Hax coding agent](https://hackerapproved.com/p/hax.md): 28 recommend - [Roo Code](https://hackerapproved.com/p/roo-code.md): 26 recommend - [Qwen Code](https://hackerapproved.com/p/qwen-code.md): 25 recommend - [MiMo Code](https://hackerapproved.com/p/mimo-code.md): 24 recommend - [GitHub Copilot Chat](https://hackerapproved.com/p/github-copilot-chat.md): 10 recommend ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "IBM Bob", https://hackerapproved.com/p/ibm-bob/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).