4 ms·

"I haven't seen the requirements, know little to nothing about the system, but I could knock that out in a weekend with a few Red Bulls." This stuff is such cri

"I haven't seen the requirements, know little to nothing about the system, but I could knock that out in a weekend with a few Red Bulls." This stuff is such cringe, it is the type of response you see from fresh CS students who haven't started working yet and think everything is a piece of demo work where the requirements don't matter and that everything is simple if you just start writing some code. Obviously the NOTAM system isn't up to scratch, that's why we're talking about it. But "hard problems are easy" isn't constructive nor very realistic. I bet someone could put in a three-hour presentation talking about all the complexity that led us to this conclusion.

JCM9 4y ago
I hear you. But the flip side is there is often a tendency to massively over complicate things in a way that bakes in valueless complexity and bloat, which is very much the norm in large government systems. I’m practice this attitude is far more common and destructive long term.
- nonethewiser 4y ago
  I think it's way worse than adding complexity and bloat. There are processes that specifically prevent anyone from understanding or owning the system. The complexity and bloat is a side product of the fact that the work was siloedd, contracted out, and everyone washed their hands off the result. Which also takes exponentially more time and people. Its optimized for inefficiency.
  - gnarbarian 4y ago
    this is extremely accurate. it's like a giant rube Goldberg machine that takes both good code and garbage as input and produces a tremendous amount of garbage that nobody can understand once it comes out the other end.
  - bink 4y ago
    Do you know that each of these systems actually has a defined "owner"? It's part of the FISMA process and every so often these "owners" have to attest that certain security processes are in place and functioning and that no significant changes have been made without a full review... among many other things. That "owner" is also a federal employee, not a contractor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Information_Security_Management_Act_of_2002 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Information_Security_M...
rattlesnakedave 4y ago
> This stuff is such cringe, it is the type of response you see from fresh CS students who haven't started working yet and think everything is a piece of demo work where the requirements don't matter and that everything is simple if you just start writing some code. This stuff is such cringe, it is the type of response you see from jaded boomers more focused on box-ticking and punching out as opposed to doing anything new. This is a situation where tossing the whole damn thing out and starting over again would be productive. The systems that lead to the creation of these half-fossilized government projects (that still don't work!) will not change and needs to be tossed.
- _ea1k 4y ago
  The problem with replacing NOTAMs is that it actually is a fairly simple system that works pretty well from a technical standpoint. The biggest issues in general relate to the data itself and the processes involved.
nonethewiser 4y ago
> "I haven't seen the requirements, know little to nothing about the system, but I could knock that out in a weekend with a few Red Bulls." This stuff is such cringe You mean the quote that you just made up?
CamperBob2 4y ago
What makes this a hard problem, exactly? It has to work no matter what, but it also doesn't have to do very much.
- gnarbarian 4y ago
  I've worked directly with this system a number of times. it's basically a pub sub rss feed optimized for low latency and molested by bureaucrats for decades

JCM9 4y ago

I hear you. But the flip side is there is often a tendency to massively over complicate things in a way that bakes in valueless complexity and bloat, which is very much the norm in large government systems. I’m practice this attitude is far more common and destructive long term.

nonethewiser 4y ago
I think it's way worse than adding complexity and bloat. There are processes that specifically prevent anyone from understanding or owning the system. The complexity and bloat is a side product of the fact that the work was siloedd, contracted out, and everyone washed their hands off the result. Which also takes exponentially more time and people. Its optimized for inefficiency.
- gnarbarian 4y ago
  this is extremely accurate. it's like a giant rube Goldberg machine that takes both good code and garbage as input and produces a tremendous amount of garbage that nobody can understand once it comes out the other end.
- bink 4y ago
  Do you know that each of these systems actually has a defined "owner"? It's part of the FISMA process and every so often these "owners" have to attest that certain security processes are in place and functioning and that no significant changes have been made without a full review... among many other things. That "owner" is also a federal employee, not a contractor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Information_Security_Management_Act_of_2002 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Information_Security_M...

rattlesnakedave 4y ago

> This stuff is such cringe, it is the type of response you see from fresh CS students who haven't started working yet and think everything is a piece of demo work where the requirements don't matter and that everything is simple if you just start writing some code. This stuff is such cringe, it is the type of response you see from jaded boomers more focused on box-ticking and punching out as opposed to doing anything new. This is a situation where tossing the whole damn thing out and starting over again would be productive. The systems that lead to the creation of these half-fossilized government projects (that still don't work!) will not change and needs to be tossed.

_ea1k 4y ago
The problem with replacing NOTAMs is that it actually is a fairly simple system that works pretty well from a technical standpoint. The biggest issues in general relate to the data itself and the processes involved.

nonethewiser 4y ago

> "I haven't seen the requirements, know little to nothing about the system, but I could knock that out in a weekend with a few Red Bulls." This stuff is such cringe You mean the quote that you just made up?

CamperBob2 4y ago

What makes this a hard problem, exactly? It has to work no matter what, but it also doesn't have to do very much.

gnarbarian 4y ago
I've worked directly with this system a number of times. it's basically a pub sub rss feed optimized for low latency and molested by bureaucrats for decades