• Telorand@reddthat.com
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    6 days ago

    My company actually wrote their flagship software in COBOL starting in the 80s, and we’re only now six years into rewriting everything in a more modern language with probably four years to go.

    I can’t imagine trying to start such a project like rewriting all of Social Security and thinking it will take months. You have to be a special kind of fatuous to unironically think that.

    • Boomer Humor Doomergod@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      I was briefly employed at a firm that maintained the sales commission software for a large telecom firm.

      It was 1.5 million lines of VB6, though VB8 was already three years old. Nobody knew all of it, so they couldn’t possibly rewrite it to handle all the edge cases and special incentives we kept having to add.

      Except maybe the lone QA person, who would frequently begin sobbing at her desk. And we could all hear it because it was an open plan office and we weren’t allowed to wear headphones.

      That job was so bad I quit and began freelancing.

    • billthemaxster@lemm.ee
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      6 days ago

      Similarly, my company are 4 years into a rewrite of a cobol mainframe system much simpler than Social Security. Which was going to “take a year” there’s at least 5 years left.

      I know the UK benefits system took well over 12 years to build with an programming workforce of over 2000 and I imagine it’s simpler having to support a population one fifth the size of the US.

      • Telorand@reddthat.com
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        6 days ago

        He’s not delusional (with regard to what he’s doing). He wins either way. The government crumbles, he gets to remake it in his image. He fails, he gets to claim he made the government more efficient, and the fact that it’s limping along is just the result of “necessary” pruning.

        This is all theater. He doesn’t actually care about the outcome or the American people.

    • brygphilomena@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      6 days ago

      The kind that thinks all those edge cases don’t matter and if they don’t get payments it’s just another example of “waste, fraud, and abuse.”