4 ms·

> In France, income tax is computed from taxpayers' individual returns, using an algorithm that is authored, designed and maintained by the French Public Financ

> In France, income tax is computed from taxpayers' individual returns, using an algorithm that is authored, designed and maintained by the French Public Finances Directorate (DGFiP). This algorithm relies on a legacy custom language and compiler originally designed in 1990, which unlike French wine, did not age well with time. This interesting. When it comes to legacy code we think of COBOL and FORTRAN most of the time, but probably there is a huge amount of even more exotic code out there that does its duty day in day out.

Icathian 6y ago
My entire industry (subset of healthcare) mostly uses a single application for 95% of our core business functions. That application is written in Visual FoxPro and is, predictably, pretty terrible. Obviously it isn't going to get better, either, but it'll be a decade or more before there's a serious competitor.
- ghaff 6y ago
  I'm not near the space any longer (in a former life, the healthcare industry was a big customer of our computer systems). But a significant portion of healthcare in the US used to use a proprietary language called MUMPS. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUMPS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUMPS
  - alextheparrot 6y ago
    Epic has been trying to move on for years, or so a recruiter told me half a decade ago. Their job posting now describes “Using leading-edge technologies and languages like JS, TS, and C#”, though I wouldn’t put a bait and switch past them.
    - ghaff 6y ago
      MEDITECH, maybe others, had a proprietary operating system too. (We had a special deal to sell them hardware without an OS at a time when they were normally bundled.) Eventually they moved on to NT.
    - akx 6y ago
      Yeah, well, they have a thing called TS2M, referred to e.g. here... https://www.reddit.com/r/epicsystems/comments/9pmsjj/ts2m_in_use/ https://www.reddit.com/r/epicsystems/comments/9pmsjj/ts2m_in...
  - p_l 6y ago
    MUMPS is quite popular in finance, mostly through Cache product. Including for new developments.
- legulere 6y ago
  Hah I’m also working in healthcare and we also use Visual FoxPro for storing data. Luckily most of the Visual FoxPro UI is gone.
semi-extrinsic 6y ago
In my country, with an admittedly quite simple tax code, the authorities used to publish each year official COBOL code that computed income tax. They switched to Java in 2018-ish - and to Github instead of a random FTP server. Doing your taxes has also been a no-op for many people the past decade or so. You don't do anything except read the tax report, unless you spot some mistakes or items missing in the report that was autofilled by the government, then you can go into the web form and submit the amendments necessary.
- ukd1 6y ago
  Cool - which country? Could you link to the Github repo?
  - pratik661 6y ago
    I’m guessing it’s Estonia. It’s really ahead with digital governance.
    - skeletal88 6y ago
      Estonian here - no it is not Estonia. Here our income tax declaration is very simple, the tax office already knows how much salary we have earned, and there aren't many deductions, so most people either don't have to file taxes at all, or just click next a few times and get their tax returns after a week or so. For 90% of people it takes less than 5 minutes.
  - 1f60c 6y ago
    I think it's Norway. (I just googled GP's email address (it's in their profile).)
  - semi-extrinsic 6y ago
    Yeah, it's Norway. https://github.com/Skatteetaten/trekktabell https://github.com/Skatteetaten/trekktabell
    - 6y ago
toolslive 6y ago
In Belgium, calculation of the pensions was done in a mix of BS2000 assembly language and COBOL until at least 2007, when they entered a race to switch to Java before the last of the original developers retired.
- specialist 6y ago
  I worked for an org that tried to modernize, again, their mainframe legacy code, and failed. I always thought it'd be easier to use an emulator and keep using the old stuff. Then over time whittle the code base down to just the business logic.
  - toolslive 6y ago
    So you think they still had a 1970s mainframe ? No: Siemens themselves replaced it with an x84 based emulator in the 90s (which ran on a desktop machine).
knaq 6y ago
We have it right here. Hacker News is written in the Arc programming language, which was developed by Paul Graham and Robert Morris. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arc_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arc_(programming_language)

Icathian 6y ago

My entire industry (subset of healthcare) mostly uses a single application for 95% of our core business functions. That application is written in Visual FoxPro and is, predictably, pretty terrible. Obviously it isn't going to get better, either, but it'll be a decade or more before there's a serious competitor.

ghaff 6y ago
I'm not near the space any longer (in a former life, the healthcare industry was a big customer of our computer systems). But a significant portion of healthcare in the US used to use a proprietary language called MUMPS. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUMPS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUMPS
- alextheparrot 6y ago
  Epic has been trying to move on for years, or so a recruiter told me half a decade ago. Their job posting now describes “Using leading-edge technologies and languages like JS, TS, and C#”, though I wouldn’t put a bait and switch past them.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    MEDITECH, maybe others, had a proprietary operating system too. (We had a special deal to sell them hardware without an OS at a time when they were normally bundled.) Eventually they moved on to NT.
  - akx 6y ago
    Yeah, well, they have a thing called TS2M, referred to e.g. here... https://www.reddit.com/r/epicsystems/comments/9pmsjj/ts2m_in_use/ https://www.reddit.com/r/epicsystems/comments/9pmsjj/ts2m_in...
- p_l 6y ago
  MUMPS is quite popular in finance, mostly through Cache product. Including for new developments.
legulere 6y ago
Hah I’m also working in healthcare and we also use Visual FoxPro for storing data. Luckily most of the Visual FoxPro UI is gone.

semi-extrinsic 6y ago

In my country, with an admittedly quite simple tax code, the authorities used to publish each year official COBOL code that computed income tax. They switched to Java in 2018-ish - and to Github instead of a random FTP server. Doing your taxes has also been a no-op for many people the past decade or so. You don't do anything except read the tax report, unless you spot some mistakes or items missing in the report that was autofilled by the government, then you can go into the web form and submit the amendments necessary.

ukd1 6y ago
Cool - which country? Could you link to the Github repo?
- pratik661 6y ago
  I’m guessing it’s Estonia. It’s really ahead with digital governance.
  - skeletal88 6y ago
    Estonian here - no it is not Estonia. Here our income tax declaration is very simple, the tax office already knows how much salary we have earned, and there aren't many deductions, so most people either don't have to file taxes at all, or just click next a few times and get their tax returns after a week or so. For 90% of people it takes less than 5 minutes.
- 1f60c 6y ago
  I think it's Norway. (I just googled GP's email address (it's in their profile).)
- semi-extrinsic 6y ago
  Yeah, it's Norway. https://github.com/Skatteetaten/trekktabell https://github.com/Skatteetaten/trekktabell
  - 6y ago

toolslive 6y ago

In Belgium, calculation of the pensions was done in a mix of BS2000 assembly language and COBOL until at least 2007, when they entered a race to switch to Java before the last of the original developers retired.

specialist 6y ago
I worked for an org that tried to modernize, again, their mainframe legacy code, and failed. I always thought it'd be easier to use an emulator and keep using the old stuff. Then over time whittle the code base down to just the business logic.
- toolslive 6y ago
  So you think they still had a 1970s mainframe ? No: Siemens themselves replaced it with an x84 based emulator in the 90s (which ran on a desktop machine).

knaq 6y ago

We have it right here. Hacker News is written in the Arc programming language, which was developed by Paul Graham and Robert Morris. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arc_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arc_(programming_language)