5 ms·

I feel like the authors of this article are being very misleading by using broader terms where they could be more specific, like using system where they could i

I feel like the authors of this article are being very misleading by using broader terms where they could be more specific, like using system where they could instead say software. The IRS isn't running 60 year old hardware, and the failure was in hardware that was just 18 months old. But because the IRS is running software that is 60 years old, the authors can claim the "system" dates back to the 1960s. It's also clear the authors don't entirely understand what they're talking about. In the second article linked to, which is written by an author of this article, he states "[t]he Individual Master File, a massive application written in the antiquated and low-level Assembly programming language" as if to imply there is but one assembly language. A GAO report I found chasing the last link in the article indicates that the two oldest systems in the Government are the IMF and Business Master File (BMF) which it says both run on IBM Hardware. My guess would be that the IRS is running modern z/Architecture mainframes in System 360 Compatibility mode. The System 360 dates back to the early 60s and IBM has maintained backward compatibility with it all the way up through z/Architecture systems. This would also explain why they're so far over budget and behind schedule.

walrus01 9y ago
the z/whatever to host legacy mainframe applications is basically a bare metal platform, custom hypervisor OS, running system 360 VMs, right?
- cptskippy 9y ago
  I'm not familiar with all of IBM's z offerings but it was my understanding that older systems were completely emulated and that there is no hardware compatibility. The emulation is completely independent of the underlying hardware platform and it allows them to retain ridiculous uptimes because of all of the hotswappable redundant systems that are able to run the systems concurrently.
reaperducer 9y ago
It's general reporting by general reporters using general language for the general public. It's not a tech publication. Joe Lunchbucket doesn't care if it's hardware that failed or software. The system failed. That's what his tax dollars pay for.
- dsfyu404ed 9y ago
  There's no reason not to include the details. People who don't care can ignore them.
  - nkristoffersen 9y ago
    But how many details do you include? How much ram? Length of the power cords? It is the job of the writer to write for the audience, not include every single detail, no?
    - adventured 9y ago
      Enough so that the tax payers understand the IRS isn't actually running on an IT system from 1958. That's a pretty hilariously low bar to set for a journalist to step over.
  - forapurpose 9y ago
    > There's no reason not to include the details. People who don't care can ignore them. Based on my experience regularly communicating technical information to non-technical people, the above suggestion works out very poorly. Each technical detail is a hurdle for the listener, causing misunderstanding, frustration, feelings of inadequacy, and doubt about your competence as an advisor and communicator. Generally, they respond like most people do when confronted with something unpleasant; they tune out your message. My advice is to include the minimum possible technical details and to express them in the clearest possible non-technical language.
- DrScump 9y ago
  Joe Lunchbucket doesn't care if it's hardware that failed or software Unfortunately, Joe and Jane Doordash in Procurement are the ones making the big choices, and it would be nice to have them informed in detail by something other than the salesdroids that have been perpetuating the problems for decades.
mankash666 9y ago
Feel free to not read articles written by non-tech people. Or, acknowledge the fact that a journalism major can only put in words what he understands of a deeply technical matter that's outside his expertise
- ep103 9y ago
  Or, suggest that this is a low quality article, and if journalistic enterprises want to report on subject matter, they should have their articles approved by people knowledgeable in that subject matter.
  - jkaplowitz 9y ago
    Unfortunately that's true for most journalism. It's just that we techies are not usually subject-matter experts in the many other areas where they make mistakes. Consistently high-quality in-depth reporting is the exception and is not a threshold most media will accept as a publication bottleneck.
    - georgeecollins 9y ago
      My Dad used to say: "The Economist "(magazine)"sounds authoritative until you read an article about something you are an expert in."
      - xapata 9y ago
        True for all journalism.
      - dx034 9y ago
        I still find they generally do a good job breaking down topics in a way most people can understand it. Often, being accurate also means being unnecessarily complex. If your goal is to explain research in an easy way, simplifying it will often introduce inaccuracy. That doesn't mean the writer isn't aware of it, they just try to get as many people as possible to read to the end (as this gets tracked online).
chx 9y ago
The oldest parts are not System 360, they run IBM 7074 assembly. Just FYI. The caching system is much newer, they have some Java proxy, there were posts about it the last year.
- rbanffy 9y ago
  I assume it runs under an emulator by now. Once I did manual disassembly of compiled code back into a high-level (for the time) language. It wasn't very fun, but , thankfully, the compilers of the day didn't optimize much. It'd be a fun project.
  - DrScump 9y ago
    the compilers of the day didn't optimize much I worked in the IBM mainframe segment to start my career, and we actually had an awesome Capex optimizing COBOL compiler. We also had a core dump formatting system (not sure if it was part of the Capex set) that made dumps much easier to read and debug, plus they broke out the generated assembler code to make it quite intuitive. I got so good with reading their dumps that going to the first realtime debuggers was slower.
    - rbanffy 9y ago
      In this case, it was a C compiler for MS-DOS.
- cptskippy 9y ago
  > they run IBM 7074 assembly That potentially puts them in the late 50s. That might be some of the oldest running code in the world. That's pretty cool. I wonder if the person who wrote it is still alive?
  - chx 9y ago
    https://archive.org/stream/irshistoricalfac00unit/irshistoricalfac00unit_djvu.txt https://archive.org/stream/irshistoricalfac00unit/irshistori... a bit broken up but it says clearly: > January 1962 Automated data processing was officially put into operation in the IRS. https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/62dbfullar.pdf https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/62dbfullar.pdf says > --Dn September 19, 1961, less than a year following its establishment as a separate division, the Automatic Data Processing Division... So the division was likely established in 1960. This https://books.google.ca/books?id=x1YESXanrgQC&pg=PA119&lpg=PA119&dq=Martinsburg+irs+mainframe&source=bl&ots=ZJ_Ald8sY2&sig=JnDB_-3VboxS0sLF3v0GQub_xKs&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiS1p7V7-PaAhUM2GMKHfveAHc4ChDoAQg0MAQ#v=onepage&q=Martinsburg%20irs%20mainframe&f=false https://books.google.ca/books?id=x1YESXanrgQC&pg=PA119&lpg=P... history corroborates by saying the treasury authorized the IRS to computerize fully in 1959. They were 7074, we know that from http://blog.modernmechanix.com/big-brother-7074-is-watching-you/ http://blog.modernmechanix.com/big-brother-7074-is-watching-... Popular Science but also that some docs from 2016 says https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-utl/scap-pia.pdf https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-utl/scap-pia.pdf > SCAP downloads Corporate Files On-Line (CFOL) data from the IBM mainframe at the Enterprise Computing Center, Martinsburg. The CFOL data resides in a variety of formats (packed decimal, 7074, DB2, etc.). > That might be some of the oldest running code in the world. https://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/dpd50/dpd50_chronology2.html https://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/dpd50/dpd50_chro... says The IBM 9090 SABRE airline reservation system begins to be installed by American Airlines in 1961. That makes SABRE contemporaneous with the IRS Master Files or slightly older. I do not know, however, how much of that code is running today.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
danso 9y ago
FWIW, the IRS.gov IT docs make reference to "Assembler Language" as if it were a proper noun: https://www.irs.gov/irm/part2/irm_02-005-003 https://www.irs.gov/irm/part2/irm_02-005-003 > The scope of this directive is Servicewide. This includes software developed by contractors. Where the guidelines apply to Assembler Language, COBOL, C Language, C++ programming, and Java programming, these guidelines shall be followed respectively.
- cptskippy 9y ago
  The two references in that document use it correctly, one is a document title and the other is contextual to a domain. The usage in the article is similar to saying "the foreign language" vs "foreign language". The former implies that there is only one where as the later does not.
hw89y24y89 9y ago
Or you're more sensitive to the specifics being that is the bubble you exist in It's not hard to see the entire "ecosystem" as a "system" generically. I am really wondering what this low-hanging pedantry is accomplishing? Has it educated anyone outside the HN community? It seems clear you don't entirely understand what you're talking about; headlines are not for tech they're for general consumption. "I wish everyone did a better job of understanding the world on my terms, regardless of whether the effort is entirely worth it for them or not."

walrus01 9y ago

the z/whatever to host legacy mainframe applications is basically a bare metal platform, custom hypervisor OS, running system 360 VMs, right?

cptskippy 9y ago
I'm not familiar with all of IBM's z offerings but it was my understanding that older systems were completely emulated and that there is no hardware compatibility. The emulation is completely independent of the underlying hardware platform and it allows them to retain ridiculous uptimes because of all of the hotswappable redundant systems that are able to run the systems concurrently.

reaperducer 9y ago

It's general reporting by general reporters using general language for the general public. It's not a tech publication. Joe Lunchbucket doesn't care if it's hardware that failed or software. The system failed. That's what his tax dollars pay for.

dsfyu404ed 9y ago
There's no reason not to include the details. People who don't care can ignore them.
- nkristoffersen 9y ago
  But how many details do you include? How much ram? Length of the power cords? It is the job of the writer to write for the audience, not include every single detail, no?
  - adventured 9y ago
    Enough so that the tax payers understand the IRS isn't actually running on an IT system from 1958. That's a pretty hilariously low bar to set for a journalist to step over.
- forapurpose 9y ago
  > There's no reason not to include the details. People who don't care can ignore them. Based on my experience regularly communicating technical information to non-technical people, the above suggestion works out very poorly. Each technical detail is a hurdle for the listener, causing misunderstanding, frustration, feelings of inadequacy, and doubt about your competence as an advisor and communicator. Generally, they respond like most people do when confronted with something unpleasant; they tune out your message. My advice is to include the minimum possible technical details and to express them in the clearest possible non-technical language.
DrScump 9y ago
Joe Lunchbucket doesn't care if it's hardware that failed or software Unfortunately, Joe and Jane Doordash in Procurement are the ones making the big choices, and it would be nice to have them informed in detail by something other than the salesdroids that have been perpetuating the problems for decades.

mankash666 9y ago

Feel free to not read articles written by non-tech people. Or, acknowledge the fact that a journalism major can only put in words what he understands of a deeply technical matter that's outside his expertise

ep103 9y ago
Or, suggest that this is a low quality article, and if journalistic enterprises want to report on subject matter, they should have their articles approved by people knowledgeable in that subject matter.
- jkaplowitz 9y ago
  Unfortunately that's true for most journalism. It's just that we techies are not usually subject-matter experts in the many other areas where they make mistakes. Consistently high-quality in-depth reporting is the exception and is not a threshold most media will accept as a publication bottleneck.
  - georgeecollins 9y ago
    My Dad used to say: "The Economist "(magazine)"sounds authoritative until you read an article about something you are an expert in."
    - xapata 9y ago
      True for all journalism.
    - dx034 9y ago
      I still find they generally do a good job breaking down topics in a way most people can understand it. Often, being accurate also means being unnecessarily complex. If your goal is to explain research in an easy way, simplifying it will often introduce inaccuracy. That doesn't mean the writer isn't aware of it, they just try to get as many people as possible to read to the end (as this gets tracked online).

chx 9y ago

The oldest parts are not System 360, they run IBM 7074 assembly. Just FYI. The caching system is much newer, they have some Java proxy, there were posts about it the last year.

rbanffy 9y ago
I assume it runs under an emulator by now. Once I did manual disassembly of compiled code back into a high-level (for the time) language. It wasn't very fun, but , thankfully, the compilers of the day didn't optimize much. It'd be a fun project.
- DrScump 9y ago
  the compilers of the day didn't optimize much I worked in the IBM mainframe segment to start my career, and we actually had an awesome Capex optimizing COBOL compiler. We also had a core dump formatting system (not sure if it was part of the Capex set) that made dumps much easier to read and debug, plus they broke out the generated assembler code to make it quite intuitive. I got so good with reading their dumps that going to the first realtime debuggers was slower.
  - rbanffy 9y ago
    In this case, it was a C compiler for MS-DOS.
cptskippy 9y ago
> they run IBM 7074 assembly That potentially puts them in the late 50s. That might be some of the oldest running code in the world. That's pretty cool. I wonder if the person who wrote it is still alive?
- chx 9y ago
  https://archive.org/stream/irshistoricalfac00unit/irshistoricalfac00unit_djvu.txt https://archive.org/stream/irshistoricalfac00unit/irshistori... a bit broken up but it says clearly: > January 1962 Automated data processing was officially put into operation in the IRS. https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/62dbfullar.pdf https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/62dbfullar.pdf says > --Dn September 19, 1961, less than a year following its establishment as a separate division, the Automatic Data Processing Division... So the division was likely established in 1960. This https://books.google.ca/books?id=x1YESXanrgQC&pg=PA119&lpg=PA119&dq=Martinsburg+irs+mainframe&source=bl&ots=ZJ_Ald8sY2&sig=JnDB_-3VboxS0sLF3v0GQub_xKs&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiS1p7V7-PaAhUM2GMKHfveAHc4ChDoAQg0MAQ#v=onepage&q=Martinsburg%20irs%20mainframe&f=false https://books.google.ca/books?id=x1YESXanrgQC&pg=PA119&lpg=P... history corroborates by saying the treasury authorized the IRS to computerize fully in 1959. They were 7074, we know that from http://blog.modernmechanix.com/big-brother-7074-is-watching-you/ http://blog.modernmechanix.com/big-brother-7074-is-watching-... Popular Science but also that some docs from 2016 says https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-utl/scap-pia.pdf https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-utl/scap-pia.pdf > SCAP downloads Corporate Files On-Line (CFOL) data from the IBM mainframe at the Enterprise Computing Center, Martinsburg. The CFOL data resides in a variety of formats (packed decimal, 7074, DB2, etc.). > That might be some of the oldest running code in the world. https://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/dpd50/dpd50_chronology2.html https://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/dpd50/dpd50_chro... says The IBM 9090 SABRE airline reservation system begins to be installed by American Airlines in 1961. That makes SABRE contemporaneous with the IRS Master Files or slightly older. I do not know, however, how much of that code is running today.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

danso 9y ago

FWIW, the IRS.gov IT docs make reference to "Assembler Language" as if it were a proper noun: https://www.irs.gov/irm/part2/irm_02-005-003 https://www.irs.gov/irm/part2/irm_02-005-003 > The scope of this directive is Servicewide. This includes software developed by contractors. Where the guidelines apply to Assembler Language, COBOL, C Language, C++ programming, and Java programming, these guidelines shall be followed respectively.

cptskippy 9y ago
The two references in that document use it correctly, one is a document title and the other is contextual to a domain. The usage in the article is similar to saying "the foreign language" vs "foreign language". The former implies that there is only one where as the later does not.

hw89y24y89 9y ago

Or you're more sensitive to the specifics being that is the bubble you exist in It's not hard to see the entire "ecosystem" as a "system" generically. I am really wondering what this low-hanging pedantry is accomplishing? Has it educated anyone outside the HN community? It seems clear you don't entirely understand what you're talking about; headlines are not for tech they're for general consumption. "I wish everyone did a better job of understanding the world on my terms, regardless of whether the effort is entirely worth it for them or not."