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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

#41

Post by TimJYoung »

FigBug wrote: post #13
TimJYoung wrote: post #7

Wow, 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 ver…

I would disagree. On of my first jobs was porting assembler to C for a paging switch. The assembler was well written and well documented. The task was slow, hard and painfully boring. It took months to get every function to be a perfect match.

Did you manually convert the assembler, or automate it ? With regard to manual conversions, I'm with you 100% - no thanks. :-)

But, my understanding is that the bulk of the work done in this case was done by a conversion tool that was designed and developed by a group of 8 people led by the gentleman referred to in the article (Jian Wang). The conversion tool project was the work that I was referring to in my comment.

Re: The IRS’s Effort to Convert Its Assembly Codebase to Java

#43

Post by [deleted] »

abtinf wrote: post #32
jimrandomh wrote: post #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…

The actual federal pay schedules are here: https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries... The GS-15 range for the DC area is $135k-164k. For federal government employees, salary only represents about half of their total compensation, which includes a lifetime inflation adjusted pension and medical benefits.

[deleted]

Re: The IRS’s Effort to Convert Its Assembly Codebase to Java

#44

Post by yetanotheruser »

TimJYoung wrote: post #7

Wow, 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 ver…

Yeah, sounds like a cool project!

Re: The IRS’s Effort to Convert Its Assembly Codebase to Java

#45

Post by derherrf »

_asummers wrote: post #15
monksy wrote: post #4

Just imagine if this new system was converted to groovy or scala. That would be pretty amazing.

Are people writing new non-Jenkins Groovy code in 2018? What's the use case? Legitimately curious. My experience with Groovy is always frustration and I liken it to the Coffeescript of Java.

We use it for an embedded DSL to describe business logic quite successfully. Easily extendable via categories and embeds naturally in a larger JVM application.

And there is Gradle.

Re: The IRS’s Effort to Convert Its Assembly Codebase to Java

#47

Post by hannibalhorn »

FigBug wrote: post #13
TimJYoung wrote: post #7

Wow, 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 ver…

I would disagree. On of my first jobs was porting assembler to C for a paging switch. The assembler was well written and well documented. The task was slow, hard and painfully boring. It took months to get every function to be a perfect match.

Manually, sure, but it sounds like the idea is/was to use an automated approach. I imagine many of the same techniques used by modern decompilers could be applied, and there's probably lots of information in assembly that is lost in machine code (e.g., JE vs JZ on x86). One could also assume some knowledge of the coding conventions used by the organization. Even a tool that could translate 90% automatically, leaving the rest to be done manually, would work out pretty well.

In some ways it reminds me of the project to programatically translate the golang compiler from C to Go. Though I imagine the codebase is quite a bit messier!

Re: The IRS’s Effort to Convert Its Assembly Codebase to Java

#48

Post by TimJYoung »

jacquesm wrote: post #12
TimJYoung wrote: post #7

Wow, 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 ver…

The big trick is the proposal itself. Writing that is only possible if you are already tied in at all kinds of levels. I've seen some of these tenders up close, the companies that land the deals submit phone book sized proposals to tenders that are officially open but actually closed unless you are in a very select circle already. It's not uncommon for the proposal writer to then pass on the actual work to a whole sl…

Thanks, I suspected that this was the case after I read the Cringely book on IBM (https://www.amazon.com/Decline-Fall-IBM-American-Icon-ebook/...). It gives one the distinct impression that connections matter a lot, and that getting the contract matters more than actually completing it successfully.

Re: The IRS’s Effort to Convert Its Assembly Codebase to Java

#49

Post by beachy »

jacquesm wrote: post #38
ryanmarsh wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying this is how contracts are awarded on FedBiz Ops? I know a handful of small players, myself included who have won IT contracts with the gov't and it is not at all like you stated.

Small contracts are an entirely different matter. Try bagging something >> $1M or defense related. I've worked for the government on small jobs here in the EU a couple of times, as long as you stay below a certain amount you can bypass a ton of requirements. But once you go above that threshold the number of players drops very rapidly and there is no escaping the formal process. If you are capable of selling large co…

The intestinal fortitude needed to prepare a proposal for these mega projects is enormous. I always end up with a gut churning feeling that no one is even going to read my work (which is interrupting any work on real projects), or that some back hander will result in a not level playing field.

Re: The IRS’s Effort to Convert Its Assembly Codebase to Java

#50

Post by imglorp »

hansjorg wrote: post #19
jimrandomh wrote: post #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…

> This is how it ends up with huge armies of bureaucrats doing things that could be easily automated. Less bureaucracy and lower costs sounds like something anyone would agree on, but remember that a large part of congress has run on anti-tax promises. Hampering the efficiency of the IRS is one way of making good on that.

There's also the tax prep lobby, which is opposed to more automation, streamlining of code, and making tax prep irrelevant in general. Half the IRS could go away if most americans could do a simple 1040 on an IRS website.

Eg: http://billmoyers.com/story/how-lobbying-by-tax-preparer-hel...

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