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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

#61

Post by vkou »

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.

What kind of medical benefits are we talking about? How many years do you have to work for the government to get it?

My employer's healthcare plan costs my employer ~20k/year as long as I'm employed, more if I had children, yet for some reason, nobody ever counts that as part of AMAFAGOPL salaries.

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

#62

Post by jelling »

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.

...and any sizable employer offers healthcare and a 401(k). So at best you could say they're betting on an inflation-adjusted pension? That's not going to sell many candidates.

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

#63

Post by makmanalp »

ww520 wrote: post #56
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…

Rather than transcode assembly to a higher-level language. It's better to nail down all the functionality the assembly program provide and re-implement them in the higher-level language. Write language independent tests against the old code and re-run the tests against the new code to make sure things are working feature for feature and bug for bug.

> nail down all the functionality the assembly program

This often proves to be much harder than expected which is /why/ people almost never touch systems like this where the creators are long gone

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

#65

Post by soVeryTired »

jelling wrote: post #62
abtinf wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

...and any sizable employer offers healthcare and a 401(k). So at best you could say they're betting on an inflation-adjusted pension? That's not going to sell many candidates.

I'm not from the US, but I'm guessing a 401(k) pension scheme is defined contribution: you pay in cash in a tax advantaged way, and the risk that the pension scheme loses money or doesn't make enough of a return to support you in retirement is borne by you.

I'm also guessing that the government's pension scheme is defined benefit: the risk that the scheme loses money is borne by the government, and you get your pre-determined payout unless the government goes bankrupt.

Defined contribution pensions are typically much more valuable, since they can obviate the need to save for retirement (or at least part of that need).

In the UK, it's extremely competitive to become a civil servant despite the mediocre pay. The reason is security, both in your job and in retirement.

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

#66

Post by _asummers »

derherrf wrote: post #45
_asummers wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Totally forgot about Gradle. Fair enough!

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

#67

Post by anfilt »

rnestler wrote: post #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?

Not the exact description I would give assembler. However, I would agree that it can be very elegant and efficient.

Although, not all assembly code is like that. Further, you depend on the device it written for to still be around.

However, I don't see a problem with assembly so that fact they are just converting to just convert it. Seems a bit frivolous. If they are having trouble hiring assembler programmers that's kinda a different issue.

However, one nice thing is that any can program in assembler and well tend be good programmers. They know what they are doing. So by switching languages they open themselves up to worse programmers.

However, Java why? If they are coding in assembly wouldn't C make more sense?

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

#68

Post by _asummers »

monksy wrote: post #55
_asummers wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Grails, POCs, Ratpat (ok danveloper.. we get it, that exists), Spock tests Why do you regularly get frustrated with groovy?

It's probably a function of it being the language that exists, and my unfamiliarity with it. I regularly just want to do the Java versions of the operation but find myself "translating" to the Groovy code where I'm unfamiliar with the design methodologies of the language and where they differ from the Java methodologies. There's interop, I'm aware, but in things like Jenkins plugins, that's kind of heavy.

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

#69

Post by jasongill »

vkou wrote: post #61
abtinf wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What kind of medical benefits are we talking about? How many years do you have to work for the government to get it? My employer's healthcare plan costs my employer ~20k/year as long as I'm employed, more if I had children, yet for some reason, nobody ever counts that as part of AMAFAGOPL salaries.

I wasn't sure if "AMAFAGOPL" was a real acronym or just something you made up, so I searched for it on Google. The only result was a link to your comment - posted just 12 minutes ago. Google is getting (scary) good at indexing social content, it seems.

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

#70

Post by woobar »

topspin wrote: post #60
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…

"1998 restructuring. It gave the IRS 40 slots ... Congress did not re-up this authority in 2013" That's 15 years of "streamlined critical pay" authority. And it appears that some number of these slots continued to exist until recently. Two decades of special authority to modernize this software, and nothing to show for it, except perhaps some patents... At some point you have to cut your loses.

Nowhere it says that these slots were created to modernize software. These 40 slots are total amount of people (out of 80K employees) that could be paid above government rates.

These slots were used to fill 168 positions over the 15 years.[1]

[1] https://www.treasury.gov/tigta/press/press_tigta-2014-51.htm

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