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Techies: What can we do to help? 3D print ventilators? Process terabytes of data in seconds? AI?! Govt: We need COBOL programmers. Techies: I am powerless to
by schmichael 7y ago
Techies: What can we do to help? 3D print ventilators? Process terabytes of data in seconds? AI?!
Govt: We need COBOL programmers.
Techies: I am powerless to help.
But seriously some of the brightest techies I know quit their jobs to do a stint of government work which included slinging VBA and ASP Classic to remove SQL injections from VA websites and other similarly unglamorous tasks with huge impact.
If you want to be patriotic. If you want to make a difference. Government work can do that. You're probably not going to train a neural net to solve coronavirus, but you'll probably be able to stop 1000 hacks from ever happening or get help to someone who really truly needs it.
- incompatible 7y agoI could help rewrite in some other language.
- goto11 7y agoCan you also guarantee that the rewritten code does not change any undocumented behavior? I think that is the real challenge.
- lucidguppy 7y agoMaybe we'd be better off writing tests then...
- daveFNbuck 7y agoYou can't guarantee that for updates to the existing code either.
- scarface74 7y agoWe still haven’t learned. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-never-do-part-i/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-...
- incompatible 7y agoSurely we can make an exception for COBOL.
- sgift 7y agoIt was a bad rule back then, it is even worse now and it didn't even stand the test of time at Fog Creek (or Glitch, looks like they have renamed themselves), where they had to do it for FogBugz to finally leave Wasabi behind. I could go on about how Firefox ended up very well and not as the complete disaster that Joel predicted back then, but that's besides the point here, namely: There can be good reasons to rewrite something and "hey, we do not find remotely enough people to work on the current code base" is pretty far up on that list.
- scarface74 7y agoSo you don’t consider it a “complete disaster” that Netscape went from 80% marketshare to almost nothing overnight? Not to mention that currently their existence is almost entirely dependent on their competitor - Google.
- Avamander 7y agoDo elaborate how its even remotely Rust's fault that FF has lost its marketshare.
- scarface74 7y agoWhat does Rust have to do with anything? Joel’s article I referenced was about Netscape rewriting their browser during the browser wars over a decade ago instead of improving their existing browser to compete with IE.
- Avamander 7y ago> Not to mention that currently their existence is almost entirely dependent on their competitor - Google. You wrote this sentence, it talks about Firefox and implies something went wrong there?
- incompatible 7y agoImagine making even a minor change to the COBOL code. It's not likely to be very well structured or comprehensible. I'm guessing there would be a lot of global variables and strange database / file system interfaces. Very hard to do it without breaking something somewhere. Edit: per the thread starting with vaidhy's comment.
- schmichael 7y agoJust yesterday there was an exciting post about printing off pages of assembly and reverse engineering archaic encryption using a crayon. If you thought that was exciting I can't imagine hacking on archaic COBOL codebase could be much worse in terms of quality of tooling! There's also a much better chance you'll have a say in the replacement if you work on and understand the original.
- DrScump 7y agoFun fact: the third-party dump formatting package we had in the 80s could show line by line what assembly code corresponded to each line of COBOL. I actually diagnosed a CAPEX optimizer bug that way once.
- boneitis 7y agoI couldn't track it down. Would you be able to relocate and link it? I'd love to see it, as someone who draws and colors all over printouts for reverse engineering challenges.
- celicaraptor 7y agoProbably this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22774057 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22774057
- boneitis 7y agoOh! I should have known :) Thanks!
- itronitron 7y agoa person is more likely 'to train a neural net to solve coronavirus' while working for the government than in the private sector
- lotsofpulp 7y ago> If you want to be patriotic. If you want to make a difference. And continue to incentivize politicians (and their voters) to underpay employees and delay infrastructure spending until a crisis, and then beg for more “patriotism”.
- jstewartmobile 7y agoyou make relieveing the government of its social obligations so it can do more wars / interventions / bailouts sound like it has some kind of humanitarian dimension...
- schmichael 7y agoGovernments are made by people, of people, and for people. If you disagree with how the US government functions the answer is to get more involved, not less. Slinging COBOL for New Jersey is not going to drop more bombs in Syria, but it might just save some lives by managing government operations more efficiently in a moment when every hour and dollar counts.
- jstewartmobile 7y agoi must concede that bailing out local bureaucrats who haven't been doing their jobs in order to help predominantly able-bodied dependents of the state is a slight improvement.
- renewiltord 7y agoPeople are asking "Can I bring my comparative advantage to bear?" because obviously the best way I can contribute if I were making half a million dollars is to take $50k of my post tax income and allocate it to boosting the salary offered.