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>"The IRS investment plan also would replace the Treasury's 1960s-era computer architecture with new machine-learning-capable systems that will be better able t

>"The IRS investment plan also would replace the Treasury's 1960s-era computer architecture with new machine-learning-capable systems that will be better able to detect suspect tax returns. IRS is the only federal agency with computers that run on the antiquated Common Business-Oriented Language (COBOL) system, Treasury said." This is a dumb statement, they're referring to zSeries that derives from System 360. This architecture is has been running fine for decades. This isn't to say the zSeries isn't up-to-date, go check the latest HotChips conference to see what's coming down the pipe. There's nothing wrong with COBOL either its been running for decades doing boring but essential things like payroll and taxes. Sprinkle all the latest flavours of ML you want alongside it but this feels like a cheap shot. I expected better journalism from Reuters.

TameAntelope 5y ago
I hate to say it, but buy Palantir stock, because the IRS isn't going to do this alone...
tablespoon 5y ago
> There's nothing wrong with COBOL either its been running for decades doing boring but essential things like payroll and taxes. IIRC, some extremely core IRS systems are actually written in IBM 360 Assembly. A few years back, there was a project to develop an automated translator to convert that code to Java, but the project failed. The lead engineer was hired on some special authorization to get around government salary limits, but that authorization couldn't be renewed before the project was done. I don't remember the specifics, but I recall reading there's an actual IBM 7000 series mainframe still in government service. It has some kind of wrapper implemented to allow it to be called by more modern systems.
- filereaper 5y ago
  >IIRC, some extremely core IRS systems are actually written in IBM 360 Assembly. Yeah, this language is called PL/X and its specifically not for use outside the company. Its a language between Assembly and C and gives the programmer a huge amount of control over the hardware. Going from PL/X to Java won't work as well as the JVM runtime has overheads that might not be acceptable for 31bit zSeries with its 2gb address space. Also compared to PL/X you're giving up a huge amount of control.
  - skissane 5y ago
    Are you confusing IBM and IRS here? PL/X is an internal language used by IBM. To the best of my knowledge, the IRS don't directly use it. (There was a brief period, I think early 2000s, IBM let members of its partner program order IBM's PL/X compiler for a small fee. They withdrew that later but some ISVs did get their hands on it while that policy was in place. I think it is actually still sometimes available to ISVs if they pay $$$ and sign an NDA.)
- skissane 5y ago
  > I don't remember the specifics, but I recall reading there's an actual IBM 7000 series mainframe still in government service. It has some kind of wrapper implemented to allow it to be called by more modern systems. My understanding is some US government agency still has some apps written in 7074 assembly language. But it doesn't have a physical 7074 series mainframe, it uses a 7074 emulator which runs under z/OS on modern System z hardware. That 7074 emulator isn't some secret sauce, it is actually just a very old IBM product. When IBM released the S/360 in the 1960s, they also released a 7074 emulator to help customers port their apps from 7074 to S/360. And this US government agency used that emulator to port some of their 7074 apps to S/360, and are still running the emulator on modern z/OS. It is probably no longer officially supported by IBM, but due to z/OS's excellent backward compatibility it still runs. (The idea that the US government still has a physical 7074, as opposed to just an emulator for it, is in part due to US government employees who have spoken about this topic publicly being deliberately vague due to "security reasons".)
chx 5y ago
It's so much worse than zSeries + COBOL... The core of those systems is IBM 7074 assembly (well, autocoder, as it was called back then). Wish I were kidding.

TameAntelope 5y ago

I hate to say it, but buy Palantir stock, because the IRS isn't going to do this alone...

tablespoon 5y ago

> There's nothing wrong with COBOL either its been running for decades doing boring but essential things like payroll and taxes. IIRC, some extremely core IRS systems are actually written in IBM 360 Assembly. A few years back, there was a project to develop an automated translator to convert that code to Java, but the project failed. The lead engineer was hired on some special authorization to get around government salary limits, but that authorization couldn't be renewed before the project was done. I don't remember the specifics, but I recall reading there's an actual IBM 7000 series mainframe still in government service. It has some kind of wrapper implemented to allow it to be called by more modern systems.

filereaper 5y ago
>IIRC, some extremely core IRS systems are actually written in IBM 360 Assembly. Yeah, this language is called PL/X and its specifically not for use outside the company. Its a language between Assembly and C and gives the programmer a huge amount of control over the hardware. Going from PL/X to Java won't work as well as the JVM runtime has overheads that might not be acceptable for 31bit zSeries with its 2gb address space. Also compared to PL/X you're giving up a huge amount of control.
- skissane 5y ago
  Are you confusing IBM and IRS here? PL/X is an internal language used by IBM. To the best of my knowledge, the IRS don't directly use it. (There was a brief period, I think early 2000s, IBM let members of its partner program order IBM's PL/X compiler for a small fee. They withdrew that later but some ISVs did get their hands on it while that policy was in place. I think it is actually still sometimes available to ISVs if they pay $$$ and sign an NDA.)
skissane 5y ago
> I don't remember the specifics, but I recall reading there's an actual IBM 7000 series mainframe still in government service. It has some kind of wrapper implemented to allow it to be called by more modern systems. My understanding is some US government agency still has some apps written in 7074 assembly language. But it doesn't have a physical 7074 series mainframe, it uses a 7074 emulator which runs under z/OS on modern System z hardware. That 7074 emulator isn't some secret sauce, it is actually just a very old IBM product. When IBM released the S/360 in the 1960s, they also released a 7074 emulator to help customers port their apps from 7074 to S/360. And this US government agency used that emulator to port some of their 7074 apps to S/360, and are still running the emulator on modern z/OS. It is probably no longer officially supported by IBM, but due to z/OS's excellent backward compatibility it still runs. (The idea that the US government still has a physical 7074, as opposed to just an emulator for it, is in part due to US government employees who have spoken about this topic publicly being deliberately vague due to "security reasons".)

chx 5y ago

It's so much worse than zSeries + COBOL... The core of those systems is IBM 7074 assembly (well, autocoder, as it was called back then). Wish I were kidding.