What could possibly go wrong? DOGE to rapidly rebuild Social Security codebase.
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Yeah, none of the computer coding languages mentioned so far come close to the complexity, edge-cases, and fudge factors you find in the CFR and Federal Register.
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It's just so funny, every time there's a discussion about COBOL projects, so many people who know nothing about it (including software people!) will go "why is it still here ? how hard can it be to replace ?" and the answers are always "because it works like clockwork" and "an order of magnitude harder than you think". Many, MANY rewriting and modernizing projects fail miserably because everyone underestimates the task to an absurd degree. The first thing you need going into one of these is humility, and a lot of it. It is unfortunately in short supply in the industry.
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Yeah, we exactly how that’s going to go: anyone who calls for woke ideas like testing critical software is going to get canned, or death threats after the co-President name drops them on X.
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Nope, not happening. GitHub and other public code repositories are not full of COBOL examples for AI to steal from. This is a dead end. Perhaps Grok can ingest the SSA's code and learn from it and put out the same baling wire and twine system in Java (write once, run slowly everywhere, but with bugs and weird modules to replace the side systems bolted onto SSA's current service).
My bet is these DOdGEy employees set up an Access system and try to do it there.
COBOL needs to go if for no other reason than a lack of people that know how to code it. I still do, but I'm not going back to that. I'm still playing with the idea of vibing projects and I'm pretty sure Boomers do not want that.
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As someone who's been in software development for over 50 years, I have two answers for you.
1. COBOL belongs wherever a system written in COBOL is functioning well, where the hardware and operating systems to run the current software is expected to continue to be available, where redevelopment in another language is either unnecessary or not cost-effective, and where there's no need for functionality that COBOL cannot support.
2. Yes, I do question Musk's team's competence. I have more experience than all of Musk's gang of script kiddies. I have experience in developing new, cutting edge systems as well as transitioning old systems to new environments and languages. They have brandy-new college degrees and a love for the taste of Musk's taint. And nothing more that I, you, or anyone else has been made aware of.
"Ass Technica" - I'm sure you think you're very clever. You're mistaken. I hope you meant it when you said you were done here.
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I’ve had similar experiences: often the most valuable thing is talking to your experienced users since they can tell you how it really works now or, especially valuable, where they know there’s a problem and are working around it outside of the developers’ sphere. I’ve had a few times where upper management delivers a “spec” and it lasts about 5 minutes into meeting with the rank and file to confirm that the managers have a very incomplete understanding of how things work.
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Oooh, I might finally get to trot out all my thoroughly useless knowledge about the under-appreciated Third Amendment!
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Especially among the demographic group where the "DOGGIE geniuses" are from, 20-something fresh out of college male.
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You could copy and paste your approach to everything the Trump administration is doing, but they are not interested in doing anything in a responsible or professional way. I am wondering when folks will wake up and start abusing them they way they are abusing us?
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This is a project of millions of lines that dates back sixty years — and that sounds like "probably uses off-the-shelf products" to you?
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According to the office of the inspector general website…
https://oig.ssa.gov/congressional-t...ressional-testimony-july14-ssa-modernization/
I don’t work for the government or a contractor but I do work for a fortune 5 company with massive COBOL applications. One in particular has been in a state of transition (to Java for now) for more than a decade now. This is with hundreds of developers.
Main reason it’s slow going? The massive numbers of edge cases built into the system for the past 50 years that nobody still at the company knows the details for.
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I'm writing a science fiction story where the 4th of July fireworks are used as a cover for a massive destruction of Teslas. This is of course a terrible act and those responsible are not the heros in my completely hypothetical story.
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Pretty much universally the reaction of ANYONE who knows what he/she is talking about for EVERY department, no? Diplomacy, military, ecpnomic, healthcare, judiciary... It's a predicted recurring theme.
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Sigh I think I could have worded it better. Since its inception the ACA has been railed upon by the GOP and the current President said in many speeches that it would be replaced by the "best ever health plan".
The playbook is promise A++, while wrecking A, with no actual method of creating A+ or A++.....
The SSA is only the first step. I have actually worked with CMS data, I guarantee they'll hit that next....
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... or Ralph Wiggum sitting on a bus saying: "I'm in danger".
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And just because:
<very pedantic>
<very pedantic>
COBOL is an acronym for Common Business Oriented Language - the “common” part meant that the same language would exist on multiple computer manufacturers’ systems (since at that point each defining their own was normal). So by definition it was the first.
The CODASYL committee was convened in 1959, but the first COBOL spec actually came out in 1960, and the first compilers followed in the early 60s. Grace Hopper’s FLOW-MATIC was one (of three) existing language definitions that was credited in the COBOL spec as a precursor, but Hopper was not on the committee that actually defined COBOL, so the phrasing here isn’t quite accurate. And the DoD sponsored CODASYL because it wanted to benefit from using a common language across its computers for its data processing needs, so it pressured the computer manufacturers to provide compliant compilers for COBOL - it didn’t really care about industry using it. COBOL’s existence (on all the different mainframes) spurred its adoption by industry (since they saw the same benefits the DoD wanted).
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Yep. That's their MO! Trump is already telling automakers not to raise prices due to tariffs...
https://www.newsnationnow.com/politics/trump-automakers-tariffs-dont-raise-prices/
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Would the police forces and military police protect the political class against a civil uprising if they saw their own grandparents being crushed by ssa payments not coming through as required? That this entirely foreseeable cruelty intentional?
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counting down the weeks until Trump announces the forced Nationalization of the failed woke automobile industry
and places Musk in charge
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You’re half very wrong and half right. Anything Oracle make should be set of fire, encased in concrete, set on fire again, then whatever is left buried in a disused mine shaft in Nevada.
But the rest of your post is twaddle: 60m LOC of COBOL implementing a complex business logic from scratch, added to over decades, and incorporating millions of lines of other languages? Easy to rewrite? With none of the original developers (in all likelihood)? And this is mission critical code - people could literally die, or become homeless, if it fails because they lose the thing they depend on - money to live.
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Oh yeah, definitely. A bunch of txns running on an IBM Z are way the hell different than handling a bunch of posts on a social network on AWS.
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It's not just COBOL (based on my experience).
There will probably be some assembler here and there doing core functions (maybe for speed) and COBOL's old buddies CICS and JCL.
And of course as reported, as the database is custom built then it will have functions that are specific to the SSA requirements which wont have an equivalent in a SQL database so now you are looking at coding some stored procs at a minimum. May be some datatypes that aren't in a standard SQL database
And as others have noted, you need a massive analysis project to map out all the logic, the data flows then do the detailed specs and the test plan.
And the database design for the new database and the data conversion process.
And interface/change/redevelop whatever API's/sub-systems that might exist for inward and outward data interchange and any GUI's/Green Screen applications/sub-systems that talk to it.
And do parallel testing for months before the cutover and have a fall back plan.
Plus performance testing and tuning.
And you cant use an [FR]AGILE dev method, you have to go waterfall cause of the complexities. This ain't some bullshit social media platform or noddy phone app, it's a mission critical transactional system.
Bluck (done my fair share of these types of projects and a former IBM'er).
**** there are just lucky they don't have to handle say an IMS database
There will probably be some assembler here and there doing core functions (maybe for speed) and COBOL's old buddies CICS and JCL.
And of course as reported, as the database is custom built then it will have functions that are specific to the SSA requirements which wont have an equivalent in a SQL database so now you are looking at coding some stored procs at a minimum. May be some datatypes that aren't in a standard SQL database
And as others have noted, you need a massive analysis project to map out all the logic, the data flows then do the detailed specs and the test plan.
And the database design for the new database and the data conversion process.
And interface/change/redevelop whatever API's/sub-systems that might exist for inward and outward data interchange and any GUI's/Green Screen applications/sub-systems that talk to it.
And do parallel testing for months before the cutover and have a fall back plan.
Plus performance testing and tuning.
And you cant use an [FR]AGILE dev method, you have to go waterfall cause of the complexities. This ain't some bullshit social media platform or noddy phone app, it's a mission critical transactional system.
Bluck (done my fair share of these types of projects and a former IBM'er).
**** there are just lucky they don't have to handle say an IMS database
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“Of course one of the big risks is not underpayment or overpayment per se but [it’s also] not paying someone at all and not knowing about it"
And this is why they are closing offices and shutting down phone lines. They know they are going to break shit and they are perfectly fine with that. No skin off their nose if a few million elderly don't get there checks for a few months. In fact for sociopathic narcissists its a win/win.
And this is why they are closing offices and shutting down phone lines. They know they are going to break shit and they are perfectly fine with that. No skin off their nose if a few million elderly don't get there checks for a few months. In fact for sociopathic narcissists its a win/win.
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Two problems:
1) They can't politically punish the SS recipients they want to punish under the current system. Oops disabled people, your checks didn't go out this month.
2) They can't make money off of that system, but contracting it out to xAI gives Musk a payment for every check that goes out.
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Whether they meant to or not.
I fully expect the SSA systems to be total destroyed by outside hackers within days of it going live if not sooner.
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The rest of us have guns too. Some of us are gun nuts too. And we have more MONEY than they do to buy our guns WITH. The argument that MAGA are somehow armed better than the rest of the country is delusional and suicidal if they actually believe it.
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In addition to COBOL, I'll bet there's a good dose of IBM 360/370 BAL in the code base, too.
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Doing money calculations with decimals instead of floats is important. I kind of doubt that's the whole reason though. I'm pretty sure that people have been successful in doing financial math in languages other than COBOL and Java.
If they intend on keeping the application and data on the mainframe then that would make a lot of sense if you just want to replace COBOL with a different language. IBM has Java classes that will read/write data from VSAM and sequential files and even interact with COBOL code. So that COBOL -> Java conversion, leaving the data alone, would be doable, certainly not in months, but an easier lift than moving the whole thing to a different platform. You surely wouldn't want to do it in FORTRAN or PL/I. You could certainly do it in C, but that seems like not a great idea. You can run Python on the mainframe, but from a performance perspective that seems like a very bad idea. Java can be performant, is only 30 years old, and manages memory for you. So overall, if you want to dump COBOL and stay on the mainframe, Java is probably the best/easiest answer.
Now what you would get from that rewrite is ... questionable. You get to advertise for Java programmers instead of COBOL programmers. Depending on lots of things, the code may run faster or slower. Quite possibly faster if they're replacing COBOL modules last compiled 30 years ago, but quite likely slower if replacing recently compiled COBOL code. OTOH, once you get the business logic to Java, then you can start thinking harder about the data storage piece and have an easier path to migrate off from the mainframe altogether. Of course those mainframe systems are really good at processing lots of data in batch with high reliability and availability.
But that would be a very strategic decision. And a long-term project. Anybody who says they're going to rewrite SSA in a few months is either deluded, delusional, or deluding.
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On the scale that includes "smart enough to know better" and "his mama didn't raise no dummy," he falls short of those, and well behind "knows what he doesn't know." The good news is that on ketamine-free days "has the sense God gave a goose" is almost within reach for him.
T.R.U.M.P. maxes out at "some degree of animal cunning."
And to think Hegseth and his fellow
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Everyone has a testing environment. It's just that some people are lucky enough to have a separate environment to run production...
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The exact figures have obviously changed since 2017, but you're looking at a ~2:1 ratio of gun owners in favor of Republicans. That's bad, obviously, but it's not why MAGA is categorically better armed. No, that's because they've fundamentally captured the American military and law enforcement.
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I got called into a project for a major bank that had spent two years redeveloping a core COBOL app (and friends) to Java (not a single grey beard leveraged in the transformation team... all bright young thrusters)
What they hadn't done at any point along the way is do any performance testing but left that till the end when doing the end to end systems test.
Basically Java wouldn't scale and no amount of hardware/performance tricks etc would make it run at speed. So basically they threw away $US 400 million of work.
So you need to chose the target architecture (hardware/software/databases/languages) carefully and not just use whats popular.
You also need to identify upfront those core functions in the existing app that are the make or break with regard to performance and create potentially throwaway standalone "mini-me" versions that emulate this and see if they scale on the target architecture (using real world data/volumes).
The java database interfaces/api are a whole world away from say an Oracle PRO*C program... lots of layers of abstraction in the java engine.
So maybe the final solution is a mix of Java and a low level language for the database/algorithmic stuff that needs speed. You might lose initial speed making an initial API call outside of Java but you then gain a whole lot once inside say the 'C' (or dear I say it, Rust) program.
Bluck
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