Earlier quoted context omitted.
Probably he's not a programmer?
Probably. Maybe he should pick up a phone and bounce his simile off the programmers he contacted while preparing the piece.
The programmers probably don't know what a simile is :)
The IRS’s Effort to Convert Its Assembly Codebase to Java
171–180 of 224 posts
Re: The IRS’s Effort to Convert Its Assembly Codebase to Java
#172> in theory, there’s no way to translate assembler code. They way it runs is not how it reads Wat?
If you do crazy "tricks" to get the space down like self modifying code or jumping into data then it won't run how it reads. It's a lot easier to do this in assembly because data and code aren't distinct.
s360 has a lot of cool features for self modifying code like the 'ex' instruction. That tends to point out exactly what's happening when you read it.
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/360_Assembly/360_Instructions/...
Re: The IRS’s Effort to Convert Its Assembly Codebase to Java
#173Wow, 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…
That’s actually not true. I work for a fairly small contractor (a few hundred people) working on a fairly large government contract. It started with a handful of people when the company was a fraction of the size.
Re: The IRS’s Effort to Convert Its Assembly Codebase to Java
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
Attempting such a cut would result in a protracted legal battle with some of the most powerful organizations in the country.
Unions? Government employees? They aren't even on the top ten of 'most powerful organizations in the country.' Not for the past four decades - Ronald Reagan fixed that glitch. What's going to happen is that paid shills will start publishing op-eds citing a handfull of executives and upper managers who gamed the pension payments system with overtime, resulting in massive payouts for themselves, drum up public outrage…
I don't believe they will ever touch federal government pensions. Municipal maybe, but not federal.
Re: The IRS’s Effort to Convert Its Assembly Codebase to Java
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, you can't say it's bipartisan when Republicans have consistently sought to intentionally damage the IRS by underfunding it. They even tried to impeach the IRS chief because he wouldn't go along with their manufactured fake news scandal about the Tea Party.
Republicans like Obama who reduced funding for the IRS multiple times while in office?
Odd that I remember him pushing to increase their budget then: http://www.govexec.com/management/2016/02/obama-would-hike-i...
In general, it does seem true that Republicans haven't been interested in funding the IRS, even though they seem to believe testimony that more funding would increase government income.
Re: The IRS’s Effort to Convert Its Assembly Codebase to Java
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
you could also just dust off the original specification. code up whatever it's supposed to do, then special case all of the junk that doesn't match.
You did read the bit that said the current system is the accumulation of almost 60 years of changing tax legislation, right?
Yeah, ~30 year projects were the longest i've ever worked on. Sometimes it's easier to read the docs about what the old programmers were trying to do - those telephone sized documents explaining requirements. if you're lucky, they might have started using source control in the 90's and you can kinda match up specs to commits.
Re: The IRS’s Effort to Convert Its Assembly Codebase to Java
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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. Not that I disagree with the general idea of democratizing this sort of big government contract, but, well, this is a much bigger hurdle than you are making it sound like. Audits can be good at finding unintentional flaws, but a skilled adversary can often create code tha…
I don't suppose those Java examples were published? I'd love to see them.
Unfortunately, I don't believe they were.
Re: The IRS’s Effort to Convert Its Assembly Codebase to Java
#178> 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?
> Assembler is like Shakespearean English. Author has no idea what assembler is.
I think the comparison is quite apt. Shakespearean English is an ancestor of today's English, much like assembly languages are the ancestors of today's languages. Shakespearean English is grammatically correct, much like this assembly code is, presumably, correct in doing what it needs to do. And, most pertinent, almost nobody speaks in Shakespearean English, and fewer and fewer people are comfortable working with it, much like assembly language.
Re: The IRS’s Effort to Convert Its Assembly Codebase to Java
#179> 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...
This is not just S/370 assembler, the real ancient parts are IBM 7074. See for example https://books.google.ca/books?id=3iEDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA88&lpg=PA... but I read some protocol docs that some of the data is still encoded as it was in the 7074.
Re: The IRS’s Effort to Convert Its Assembly Codebase to Java
#180What this article implies is not entirely correct: this codebase is not S/370 assembly, oh no. It's IBM 7074! Check also the reports which said the Master File age was over 55 years -- the S/370 is too new for that.
https://books.google.ca/books?id=3iEDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA88&lpg=PA...