Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

federalnewsradio.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 224 posts

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

#71

Post by protomyth »

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?

I actually liked programming IBM/370 assembler. It wasn't half bad once you got past EBCDIC. It was certainly better than the x86. It also was pretty much eternal.

I think I still have my banana book somewhere. https://i.pinimg.com/originals/fb/85/89/fb85890d32df071cf842... http://cbttape.org/~jmorrison/s370asm/html/tut-REFSUM-001.ht...

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

#72

Post by anfilt »

monocasa wrote: post #46

> in theory, there’s no way to translate assembler code. They way it runs is not how it reads Wat?

Oh wow the article says that. "It does not run how it reads really..." that is the polar opposite of assembly.

Compiled languages are more likely do thing under the head you don't expect especially a language ran in VM with garbage collection like Java.

Also Java why? I would not trust a language system dependent oracle. The days of Sun Microsystems is sadly gone. =(

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

#73

Post by aninteger »

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…

$103k-$134k sounds very market rate to me... Maybe not for the San Francisco Bay Area but for areas outside of that it seems fine.

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

#74

Post by vkou »

jasongill wrote: post #69
vkou wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Amazon-microsoft-facebook-google-apple.

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

#75

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#76

Post by arglebarnacle »

soVeryTired wrote: post #65
jelling wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...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-d…

Yes that's right, but you've got the terms reversed. Defined contribution is the one where you bear the risk, and defined benefit is where the government bears the risk.

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

#77

Post by robertha »

ryanmarsh wrote: post #25
jacquesm wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

I just registered on SAM and submitted a bid (something unrelated to this), but no idea what I was doing, I mean I put together a plan, had meaningful past performance, but overall I'm just hoping for the best. Would you happen to have any resources you followed? Or, suggestions that you believe led you to submitting a successful bid?

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

#78

Post by soVeryTired »

arglebarnacle wrote: post #76
soVeryTired wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-d…

Yes that's right, but you've got the terms reversed. Defined contribution is the one where you bear the risk, and defined benefit is where the government bears the risk.

Whoops! My bad - edited.

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

#79

Post by frozenport »

aninteger wrote: post #73
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…

$103k-$134k sounds very market rate to me... Maybe not for the San Francisco Bay Area but for areas outside of that it seems fine.

Not if you want a good senior developer. These guys are perpetually stuck with junior devs.

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

#80

Post by AlexCoventry »

It sounds like the effort might have been a step in the right direction, but hardly a solution in its own right. The result would be a literal case of the aphorism "You can write assembly in any language."

The translation would have some minor benefits: interop with java libraries would be nice, it could help to plug the system into better infrastructure like a modern testing framework, and it might run a little more securely. (I wonder whether you could craft a tax return to crash this system.) But it wouldn't have magically produced readable modern java code.

Post reply on HN