3 ms·

I think the issue is a mix of "the boy who cried wolf" and really smart programmers with almost no real world experience who have been told to find "fraud". I a

I think the issue is a mix of "the boy who cried wolf" and really smart programmers with almost no real world experience who have been told to find "fraud". I am confident the government is rife with it. Issue is we have unleashed these young developers who I am sure are all excellent programmers who can code me under the table. Issue becomes developers with experience will question requirements, very good developers without experience will say "this is easy" and then just implement it. They were told to find fraud so we are presented with the classic "to a hammer, everything looks like a nail" . On top of that, Musk is so eager to announce progress that he just repeats what he is told as he knows that these are very smart programmers. I found myself working in an heavily regulated industry recently and I can tell you if you dropped a young really smart programmer into the code base they would find a million things that are inefficient and wrong. In reality they were carefully coded that way to support some byzantine law or legacy program or one off. An experienced dev will ask "anyone know why we do X in module Y"? and he will get an answer saying "yes, its because of...". The young hotshot dev just deletes and rewrites it or yells "fraud" So Musk is shooting himself in the foot when if he just waited and verified he could release valid and I am sure damning evidence of fraud but currently he is just "crying wolf"

jki275 2y ago
I've personally worked in such a system. I can tell you -- as someone who asked the question often -- that often, the answer is "because we wrote it that way in 1975 and no one has bothered to spend the time to learn how to make it better since then. It is not necessarily true something written forty years ago is right. It is not necessarily true that something written forty years ago has some secret logic in it that cannot be improved upon. It is not necessarily true that something written forty years ago cannot be improved by fresh eyes. Obviously one must not change things recklessly -- but there are often improvements that can be made.
- wonderwonder 2y ago
  Fair point
int_19h 2y ago
And don't forget that the programmers in question are specifically selected based on their ideological adherence and loyalty. Which is to say, they are already convinced that waste is there, and that it is welfare and entitlements mostly.

jki275 2y ago

I've personally worked in such a system. I can tell you -- as someone who asked the question often -- that often, the answer is "because we wrote it that way in 1975 and no one has bothered to spend the time to learn how to make it better since then. It is not necessarily true something written forty years ago is right. It is not necessarily true that something written forty years ago has some secret logic in it that cannot be improved upon. It is not necessarily true that something written forty years ago cannot be improved by fresh eyes. Obviously one must not change things recklessly -- but there are often improvements that can be made.

wonderwonder 2y ago
Fair point

int_19h 2y ago

And don't forget that the programmers in question are specifically selected based on their ideological adherence and loyalty. Which is to say, they are already convinced that waste is there, and that it is welfare and entitlements mostly.