5 ms·

What's especially unfortunate is that experienced USDS employees had already achieved the one software engineering task that is basically impossible for a 19-ye

by danso 2y ago

What's especially unfortunate is that experienced USDS employees had already achieved the one software engineering task that is basically impossible for a 19-year-old (or a newly hired USDS employee of any age): convincing a federal department manager that using a static website is a great solution — nevermind also publishing all of its source code and documents on a public github.

Someone1234 2y ago
USDS really did represent the best of the federal government. They modernized hundreds of websites, brought accessibility and mobile access to the forefront, improved usability, and a lot of that work is invisible, slow, internal politics/battles. Understandably everyone is upset about what "DOGE" is doing. But on top of those harms, the killing of USDS (or at least ending its core mission) is also a real harm.
- niceice 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - unsui 2y ago
    [flagged]
  - genewitch 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - tomrod 2y ago
      Sound fcc.gov has not been using the USDS playbook.
    - johnnyanmac 2y ago
      Odd claims and you didn't really support it (I use Google to find everything doesn't matter how well organized the site is). Why do you have inherent bias against public sector tech workers >My tax dollars are better spent not having a website in most of these cases. Blame your rep for it then. We don't set the budget. We vote in people we trust are in our best interest to set such spending.
      - genewitch 2y ago
        > Why do you have inherent bias against public sector tech workers huh?
        johnnyanmac 2y ago
        Your comment is flagged now, but I recall you saying seething to the effect of "the idea that a government website is laudable is laughable". There were general sentiments that a government website was naturally disposed to he a chaotic mess. I identified that as a bias against a government website. Aka the workers who work on it.
  - andrewinardeer 2y ago
    The US government was funding Afghan farmers to grow 'crops'. I'm fairly sure that wasn't cotton.
    - sentrysapper 2y ago
      in Seeds Of Terror by Gretchen Peters points out those subsidies helped farmers NOT farm opium for the Taliban. If you think of it from an Afghani farmer's perspective: why would you farm any other crop that pays significantly less per yield when you have a family to feed?
      - andrewinardeer 2y ago
        Congress doesn't allow for funding of crops in other counties that compete on the international market.
        ImPostingOnHN 2y ago
        Seems like they do
    - rascul 2y ago
      It was strawberries.
  - almosthere 2y ago
    [flagged]
  - steve_adams_86 2y ago
    This seems unlikely. If even 5% of Trump voters don’t want to see this, that very likely means less than half of voters wanted this. That’s a very small margin to work with. From here in Canada it doesn’t look like this is a popular action to take. I could be wrong and maybe tons of democrat voters want to see this… But what I’m seeing online indicates otherwise.
    - extraduder_ire 2y ago
      No candidate received more than 50% of the votes cast in the last US presidential election.
      - steve_adams_86 2y ago
        Okay, what I meant is more like "if only 5% of the largest body of voters don't want what the administration they voted for is doing, it's very possible that more than 50% of all voters combined (regardless of who they voted for) don't want what's happening"
  - thedougd 2y ago
    Some people want a leaner government, but they also want that achieved with care and thoughtfulness by domain experts. Chesterton's fence comes to mind.
- gavmor 2y ago
  I'm not a federal contractor nor employee, and I am a die-hard Pivotal zealot, so absolutely take the following with a grain of pink Himalayan rock salt: Although overshadowed by Kubernetes elsewhere in the industry, I suspect that Pivotal's Cloud Foundry Platform as a Service (PaaS)--which the US General Services Administration's (GSA) internal digital transformation consultancy, 18F, adopted[0] in 2015 significantly influenced the software delivery philosophy of the federal government by making trivial heretofore disastrously cumbersome provisioning, staging, and deployment processes. The step away from hand-provisioned virtual machines to elastic, accommodating environments may have made agile development possible in federal offices, bringing our government into the 21st century, only fifteen years late. I distinctly remember the switch from "here's your VM" to "here's my code," and--as an application developer--I never want to go back. 0. See: https://cloud.gov https://cloud.gov
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    To me, that's the most important goal of devops tools teams in practice: "Internal team, what's your current greatest pain point?" -> Make that easier / faster / better
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

by danso 2y ago

Someone1234 2y ago

USDS really did represent the best of the federal government. They modernized hundreds of websites, brought accessibility and mobile access to the forefront, improved usability, and a lot of that work is invisible, slow, internal politics/battles. Understandably everyone is upset about what "DOGE" is doing. But on top of those harms, the killing of USDS (or at least ending its core mission) is also a real harm.

niceice 2y ago
[flagged]
- unsui 2y ago
  [flagged]
- genewitch 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - tomrod 2y ago
    Sound fcc.gov has not been using the USDS playbook.
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    Odd claims and you didn't really support it (I use Google to find everything doesn't matter how well organized the site is). Why do you have inherent bias against public sector tech workers >My tax dollars are better spent not having a website in most of these cases. Blame your rep for it then. We don't set the budget. We vote in people we trust are in our best interest to set such spending.
    - genewitch 2y ago
      > Why do you have inherent bias against public sector tech workers huh?
      - johnnyanmac 2y ago
        Your comment is flagged now, but I recall you saying seething to the effect of "the idea that a government website is laudable is laughable". There were general sentiments that a government website was naturally disposed to he a chaotic mess. I identified that as a bias against a government website. Aka the workers who work on it.
- andrewinardeer 2y ago
  The US government was funding Afghan farmers to grow 'crops'. I'm fairly sure that wasn't cotton.
  - sentrysapper 2y ago
    in Seeds Of Terror by Gretchen Peters points out those subsidies helped farmers NOT farm opium for the Taliban. If you think of it from an Afghani farmer's perspective: why would you farm any other crop that pays significantly less per yield when you have a family to feed?
    - andrewinardeer 2y ago
      Congress doesn't allow for funding of crops in other counties that compete on the international market.
      - ImPostingOnHN 2y ago
        Seems like they do
  - rascul 2y ago
    It was strawberries.
- almosthere 2y ago
  [flagged]
- steve_adams_86 2y ago
  This seems unlikely. If even 5% of Trump voters don’t want to see this, that very likely means less than half of voters wanted this. That’s a very small margin to work with. From here in Canada it doesn’t look like this is a popular action to take. I could be wrong and maybe tons of democrat voters want to see this… But what I’m seeing online indicates otherwise.
  - extraduder_ire 2y ago
    No candidate received more than 50% of the votes cast in the last US presidential election.
    - steve_adams_86 2y ago
      Okay, what I meant is more like "if only 5% of the largest body of voters don't want what the administration they voted for is doing, it's very possible that more than 50% of all voters combined (regardless of who they voted for) don't want what's happening"
- thedougd 2y ago
  Some people want a leaner government, but they also want that achieved with care and thoughtfulness by domain experts. Chesterton's fence comes to mind.
gavmor 2y ago
I'm not a federal contractor nor employee, and I am a die-hard Pivotal zealot, so absolutely take the following with a grain of pink Himalayan rock salt: Although overshadowed by Kubernetes elsewhere in the industry, I suspect that Pivotal's Cloud Foundry Platform as a Service (PaaS)--which the US General Services Administration's (GSA) internal digital transformation consultancy, 18F, adopted[0] in 2015 significantly influenced the software delivery philosophy of the federal government by making trivial heretofore disastrously cumbersome provisioning, staging, and deployment processes. The step away from hand-provisioned virtual machines to elastic, accommodating environments may have made agile development possible in federal offices, bringing our government into the 21st century, only fifteen years late. I distinctly remember the switch from "here's your VM" to "here's my code," and--as an application developer--I never want to go back. 0. See: https://cloud.gov https://cloud.gov
- ethbr1 2y ago
  To me, that's the most important goal of devops tools teams in practice: "Internal team, what's your current greatest pain point?" -> Make that easier / faster / better

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]