Ah yes, a classic tale…
“We’re going to take this perfectly efficient and functional COBOL code base and rewrite it in Java! And we’ll do it in a few months!”
So many more competent people and organizations than them have already tried this and spectacularly crashed and burned. There are literal case studies on these types of failed endeavors.
I bet they’ll do it in Waterfall too.
It’s interesting. If they use Grok, this could well be the deathknell for vibe programming (at least for now). It’s just fucking tragic that their hubris will cause grief and pain to so many Americans - and cost the lives of more than a few.
Edit: Fixed some typos.
Jokes aside, nothing wrong with rewriting in Java. It is well-suited for this kind of thing.
Rewriting it in anything without fully understanding the original code (the fact they think 150yo are collecting benefits tells me they don’t) is the biggest mistake here. I own codebases much smaller than the SSA code and there are still things I don’t fully understand about it AND I’ve caused outages because of it.
I’ve worked on these “cost saving” government rewrites before. The problem is getting decades of domain logic and behavior down to where people can be productive. It takes a lot of care and nuance to do this well.
Since these nazi pea brains can’t even secure a db properly I have my doubts they’ll do this successfully.
Not just domain logic. The implementation logic is often weird too. Cobol systems have crash/restart behaviour and other obscure semantics that often end up being used in anger; it’s like using exceptions for control flow, but exceedingly obscure and unfortunately (from what I’ve seen of production cobol) a “common trick” in lots of real-world deployments.
Functional, yes. But rarely are these sorts of things efficient. They’re covered in decades of cruft and workarounds.
Which just makes them that much harder to port to a different language. Especially by some 19 year old who goes by “Big Balls”
Australian here.
They are robbing you
🌍🧑🚀🔫🧑🚀
These comments are completely missing the truth.
They have zero intention of rebuilding anything, this is just an excuse to destroy SSA …
This is like a new programmer coming in to their new job, seeing the code isn’t perfect and saying they could rebuild the entire thing and do it better in a month.
I’m sure the doge boys are expert grock vibe coders, it will be fine, they’ve got big ballz on the team, what could possibly go wrong? /s
I did such a thing, but I had a big advantage: the codebase had been done by people who had never really learned to code, and I was a seasoned programmer with 20 years of experience.
Yeah, I’ve cleaned up the messes that idiots like that have left.
That happens. Even if said new programmer had seen before that IRL the important part of that codebase consists of specific domain area quirks, scarcely documented and understood. They have an advantage in doing something good for the specific stage of that system’s evolution, but a huge disadvantage in knowing what the hell it really does.
I’ve worked on teams converting legacy code for most of my life. The planning for something like this would take longer than six months.
If this proceeds in Trump’s corrupt government, Elon will get the contract, will claim it is too broken to salvage, and will privatize it. The only way this goes anywhere is if Trump and musk stand to gain money, and they stand to gain a lot.
If they planned a 1 month migration of a small component, 6 months to complete would be pretty lucky imo. Refactoring Legacy Code mentions the 2.0 approach they’re taking. Spoiler alert, it doesn’t work…
Just determining the requirements would be a nightmare.
Months? I don’t k ow how to code, and even I know that’s impossible.
they will make chatGPT do it and then not verify.
I know how to code, how to manage programs, how to architect huge safety-critical systems, and quite a few other things, and I know that you are right. I’d give it 5 to 7 years if it were adequately resourced, there was political commitment, and the stakeholders could be made to agree a set of requirements, then not change them unless there’s a really convincing reason (conflicts with other requirements, impossible to implement, breaks everything, etc).
And the validation and verification of such a system could itself take a year or more, if it’s well-planned and correctly executed.
They’re really playing with fire here.
So many MAGA supporters are seniors who are entirely dependent on OASDI. If Trump’s minions break this, we’re going to see torches and pitchforks strapped to electric scooters and golf carts coming out of Florida retirement communities in droves.
Nah, they’ll just say the Democrats are still worse because reasons
The reason is that it takes a lot of emotional intelligence and strength to admit that you have been scammed. These people will find it less emotionally painful to deny reality then admit their mistakes.
No they’d just blame the liberals and maintain 100% loyalty lol.
Yes. They need to move quickly. Public opinion is already shifting against Trump and Musk, and right now they are vulnerable.
If it fails spectaculairly who will take the blame? Will there be any repercussions at all?
Or will Musk and Trump shrug their shoulders? Halfheartedly blame Biden for badly programming the original database then go play some golf/videogaminges?
I think the hope is that it fails, they don’t want social security to work.
This is just another step down “I honestly just can’t comprehend the stupidity of what is going on in the American government”-alley…
Like… what do they even expect to come of this? Why are they even interested in doing it? Is it just to stir up shit?
They are trying to break the government beyond all repair. At that point they’ll say it’s the Democrats that broke it.
Their cult members will swallow the lie hook line and sinker, and continue to keep them in power. (Side note, this will be made easier by gutting all election oversight as part of the package.)
Meanwhile, all that tax money we paid into Social Security, SNAP, Medicaid and Medicare, Unemployment insurance… basically any program meant to help people, will flow directly into billionaire’s pockets.
Idk I think these old people will riot tbh
if (!=white) {benefits=false}
Nah I think it will just be
const benefits = false;In Javascript, no less
I’m less than a decade from taking my SS early. I have already downloaded my SS deduction tables from their website in anticipation of them doing something this stupid. “Oh… you think you are eligible for earned benefits? We can’t seem to locate your contribution history… so sorry for you.”
I’m on SSDI and VA disability. I can’t work. I’m terrified every time they even breath in the direction of either place. I’d be super fucked. Even losing SSDI would destroy us. That’s about 3/4 of our mortgage payment. So many other vets are in the same boat.
how do you do this? probably good for all of us to know
First you need to log into your social security account. If you have never done this is can be a bit cumbersome, but better to get it figured out now than later. Then once you have been able to log in to “my Social Security” you will see a “Your Social Security Statement” on that landing page. It will allow you do download a PDF that has your projected benefit and your earnings records by work year.
thank you!
This clusterfck has me seriously considering whether taxes are quite as certain as death anymore.
This idea is terrifying in the most insidious ways. Who has access to the code? Who is auditing the code? Are they putting in code that may disenfranchise “the right people”. How long will it take to come to light? When found out, provided ‘Adults’ are running the country again, how much and how long would it take to fix it? And what backdoors are in the code?
This is bad news all around.
If SS payments stop, there will be hundreds of thousands of people with nothing left to lose.
Over 70 million including many retirees, orphans, and disabled workers. The people most in need of help and the reason that trying to run a government like a capitalist business is one of the dumbest forms of government organization ever. A quick way to radicalize someone against you is to harm their family or take their money.
My mom is over 80. Little old suburban white lady. She already volunteered - “Just get me close.” She’d be super-thrilled to have her shot with a suicide vest.
I also know a 93-year-old lady who has loudly talked about taking a few of the bastards with her. The sentiment may be more widespread than we think.
Suicide bombers on mobility scooters. Be very afraid.
This is how you know Musk is a fraud. This far into his career and he’s leading teams into rookie mistakes.
Or, he knows this will break it and that’s the goal. I’m just not sure how he avoids the blame.
DARVO is all you need to avoid blame. Deny. Reverse Victim and Offender. Incredibly effective with everyone except the genuinely principled.
When he suggested PayPal convert its data centers from Linux to Microsoft Server, I knew he was a wrong’un. That was one of the reasons he got booted out of PayPal, by the way. Even the other bullshitter tech bros knew how stupid that idea was.
