As long as Big Ballz is running things, I’m sure it will all be fine!
/s
I wish them luck. I hope they can. Make a good system and that it works how they want it to. Failure is a no go
Gonna blow up the database as many times as they blow up SpaceX rockets.
Sooo only gonna blow up the test databases?
This has the stench of junior engineer all over it. This rewrite will go way over budget and come limping across the finish line late, with more bugs and less features than the system it replaces. I guarantee it.
AI is going to write it.
1000% percent. If they can’t even figure out how dates work in COBOL we are getting a vibe coded SSA. Let’s hope they trained LLMs on COBOL or we are cooked.
They’re really playing with fire here.
So many MAGA supporters are seniors who are entirely dependent on OASDI. If Trump’s minions break this, we’re going to see torches and pitchforks strapped to electric scooters and golf carts coming out of Florida retirement communities in droves.
Yes. They need to move quickly. Public opinion is already shifting against Trump and Musk, and right now they are vulnerable.
No they’d just blame the liberals and maintain 100% loyalty lol.
Nah, they’ll just say the Democrats are still worse because reasons
The reason is that it takes a lot of emotional intelligence and strength to admit that you have been scammed. These people will find it less emotionally painful to deny reality then admit their mistakes.
In theory, it wouldn’t be a necessarily bad idea to port the COBOL code to something more modern, but I cannot trust Muskrat and a few vibe coder youngsters with this task.
In theory it is a horrible idea. No port like this ever works out. An incremental approach has much higher chance of success but will take long.
If these people are good enough to redo federal codebases I should apply for a coding job already
Bro. Check it out bro, we’re gonna like make it this dope Electron app, bro. It’ll interface with X, bro and everyone will have to login there to get their money, bro. Don’t worry tho, you’ll get paid in recession-proof Trumpbux crypto currency as long as you claim it in time. But X gets a fee of 60% bro.
Seriously bro we like hired a bunch of grads that took a one week X created code boot camp that like you know revolved around a language big balls created called “cyber coin purse++”. On second thought bro we’re rewriting it in that. Should be like 2 weeks to rewrite it cuz old people wrote the current code and they’re like old or whatever bro. Like I live in an old person’s basement and they’re just like old, bro.
in theory yeah it’s not a bad idea but it’s also 60 million lines of a cobol
“ROFL”
Signed, everyone who has been involved in migrating a codebase before.
I mean this is a great example of what happens when you put conservative men in power who think they know what they are doing but are just going to loudly, incompetently and incorrectly re-invent the wheel while everyone else suffers from not having an actual practical solution.
By rebuild I don’t think they mean it’s going to function the same. …just torn apart and replaced.
That is the mother load of all code bases. Probably still some COBOL if not mostly cobol.
They have an experienced team of teenagers don’t worry.
Okay but have you ever tried just throwing genAI at the problem and not caring about the consequences?
With Grok looking more and more like the only one working for Musk with enough (digital) balls to stand up to his boss, that might be better than the alternative of “Big Balls” and the rest of the Digital Oblivous Goons of Elon
They’ll have it lobotomized in a few days.
Yep, months is a joke, doubly so when talking about tens of millions of lines of code and also COBOL specifically.
This is going to be a hilarious disaster but not so hilarious when people who need the benefits need them and won’t be able to get them.
I’m on SSDI (and Medicaid and HUD housing) and have been having insane anxiety the last month and a half to the point that I’m wondering if I’ll even get paid in April. I regularly check my SSA account online to make sure my direct deposit is still freaking scheduled. Missing a payment could mess up all of my other benefits as well.
I know the fuck up is coming, but I don’t know if I can handle another few months hoping they don’t fuck up the migration if they don’t fuck up just paying people first with all that’s been going on.
I’m pretty sure Im not the only one in this situation who can’t handle the stress of this bullshit.
To be fair. We assume “months” means less than 2 years. But 10 years can also be “months”, and is probably a more realistic timeline.
Nobody is referring to 10 years as “months”.
When you’re talking about multiples of years, it’s going to be called years, not months. They were obviously talking about a short timeline, less than 2 years, likely less than 1 year.
They have no idea what they’re talking about.
Like I said, months is a joke.
So was what I said. I was presenting a hypothetical way they justify their ridiculous claims by doing something else ridiculous.
But conveying tone in text is difficult, so I’m not surprised you missed what I was going for.
I’ve worked on teams converting legacy code for most of my life. The planning for something like this would take longer than six months.
If this proceeds in Trump’s corrupt government, Elon will get the contact, will claim it is too broken to salvage, and will privatize it. The only way this goes anywhere is if Trump and musk stand to gain money, and they stand to gain a lot.
If they planned a 1 month migration of a small component, 6 months to complete would be pretty lucky imo. Refactoring Legacy Code mentions the 2.0 approach they’re taking. Spoiler alert, it doesn’t work…
Just determining the requirements would be a nightmare.
I’m sure having a corrupt non-government narcissist rewrite the code for SS will be fine. It’s not like he could leave any code hidden in there for his own purposes, like controlling or redirecting payments or anything.
Hey asshole - it works - don’t fix it.
Bring back lotus notes and the command line!
When I started at my workplace a few years back, I had to login to lotus notes to obtain some sort of ID code. I’d never heard or seen the software before, but after opening it, I let out an audible “what the fuck is this shit”. Luckily they got rid of it completely a couple of years ago.
riskingguaranteeingIs it a “risk” if it’s the desired outcome?
“…but sir, we only know Node.js…”
Musk would probably think that’s just fine.
Server-side javascript is an abomination, but there’s more of it around than you might think.
Node.js is a fantastic tool for web servers. Its event loop allows it to rival much lower-level languages in performance while remaining easy to write and maintain. JavaScript has been the most popular programming language for nearly a decade.
Just no man.
Yes, JavaScript has been the most popular language but it is exclusively because of the front-end. Many companies do not want to pay for separate back-end devs and ask their front-end devs to do it instead. These people (ab)use JS because they’re most comfortable with it and are under crunch; so we end up with the abomination that is back-end JS.
It is NOT rivaling much lower-level languages; it can’t even rival C#.
First off, it is interpreted. You are never going to be faster than competently written C, C++, Go, nor Rust. Secondly, the resources it takes to exist makes in a non-option for embedded machines - which Social-Security facilities are all but guaranteed to use.
Not to mention the horrendous (and insecure) package infrastructure, and under-powered core libraries - it would be the fullest extent disaster.
The saddest part? The larpers at DOG(shit)E are all but guaranteed to pick the worst tools for the job, over-engineer, and have extremely poor management. Meaning whatever they ship WILL collaspe the system day 1; and all of the people refusing to pay attention will be like “hOw CouLd THis HaPPen”
Well you need static types I assume, for code safety and all that.
step 1. rewrite into spaghetti code
step 2. nobody understands the new code, so the govt has to contract elon musk for code maintenance forever
step 3. profit
So the way things already were?
Rewrite it in Rust has gone too far 😆
The MuskRat should get Big Ballz and the boys to program a video game, so he can have a new revenue stream to replace Tesla when it goes bankrupt, which sure looks like the future of that company.
