The IRS’s Effort to Convert Its Assembly Codebase to Java
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The IRS’s Effort to Convert Its Assembly Codebase to Java
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Re: The IRS’s Effort to Convert Its Assembly Codebase to Java
#2The best argument to new development is working code. I assume that they can't hire people to upgrade or maintain Maniframe software anymore.
Re: The IRS’s Effort to Convert Its Assembly Codebase to Java
#3>assembler-to-Java project
Where's my gif of that guy who looks skeptically at that thing he's looking at? You know that one.
Re: The IRS’s Effort to Convert Its Assembly Codebase to Java
#4Just imagine if this new system was converted to groovy or scala. That would be pretty amazing.
Re: The IRS’s Effort to Convert Its Assembly Codebase to Java
#5> Assembler is like Shakespearean English. It’s dated. A shrinking number of people can deal with it. But it’s also elegant and highly functional.
What is considered elegant and functional about assembly?
Re: The IRS’s Effort to Convert Its Assembly Codebase to Java
#6Sounds like a great reason to simplify our tax system!
Re: The IRS’s Effort to Convert Its Assembly Codebase to Java
#7Wow, what a cool project to work on: working out the logic flows in assembler and breaking them out so that they can be translated into a higher-level language.
I've always thought that this type of government work should be open to bids from anyone. If the government is worried about trojans, malware, etc., then they can easily hire an auditor to audit the code and vouch for its authenticity. The fact that only very large, well-connected corporations get a crack at these types of problems is insane and a complete waste of taxpayer money.
Re: The IRS’s Effort to Convert Its Assembly Codebase to Java
#8> Wang was working under streamlined critical pay authority the agency has had since its landmark 1998 restructuring. It gave the IRS 40 slots under which it could pay temporary, full-time employees higher than GS rates. Former Commissioner John Koskinen pointed out Congress did not re-up this authority in 2013, despite his entreaties to former Congressman Jason Chaffetz’s Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
> He says he applied to become a GS-15 or Senior Executive Service member so he could see through the assembler-to-Java project. But his approval didn’t come through until a week before his employment authority expired. By then he’d accepted another job.
(GS-15 is $103k-$134k. https://www.federalpay.org/gs/2017/GS-15)
So, basically: the IRS can't fix its software because it can't pay market rates for software engineers. It can't pay market rates for software engineers not because it lacks the budget for it, but because Congress won't let them. This is how it ends up with huge armies of bureaucrats doing things that could be easily automated.
Re: The IRS’s Effort to Convert Its Assembly Codebase to Java
#9> Assembler is like Shakespearean English. It’s dated. A shrinking number of people can deal with it. But it’s also elegant and highly functional. What is considered elegant and functional about assembly?
I've always thought the formatting kind of lends itself to a little bit of visual elegance. Since its always 1 instruction per line, various instruction fields tend to line up nicely.
But yeah I don't see how it is elegant in any way that's useful
Re: The IRS’s Effort to Convert Its Assembly Codebase to Java
#10Funny how it's always the same companies producing code for the government based on political relationships - but the outcome of government software is always so bad.