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IRS’ 60-Year-Old IT System Failed on Tax Day Due to New Hardware

nextgov.com

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Re: IRS’ 60-Year-Old IT System Failed on Tax Day Due to New Hardware

#31

Post by hcknwscommenter »

ams6110 wrote: post #6

> Since Republicans gained control of the House of Representatives in 2010, their partisan attacks have left the IRS with nearly 10,000 fewer customer service representatives to assist taxpayers and a patchwork of IT systems, some dating back to the Kennedy Administration, which is ultimately harming all taxpayers,” Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., told Nextgov. So the patchwork 1960s-era systems are the fault of Republic…

>So the patchwork 1960s-era systems

You have (purposely?) mis-stated the previous statement quoted above. A patchwork of systems that includes some systems dating back to the Kennedy Administration is not the same as a patchwork of 1960'era systems. Could it be that the "starve the best" mentality hindered or blocked a number of planned migrations/upgrades?

Re: IRS’ 60-Year-Old IT System Failed on Tax Day Due to New Hardware

#32

Post by mbell »

johnklos wrote: post #18

Something that the kids of IT today will never learn: Never replace anything unless the thing doing the replacing is better than the thing being replaced. The IRS' IT "upgrade" is just a huge money grab. Nobody has the slightest interest or desire to do anything properly - they simply want in on that lucrative IRS money. It's like the saying: "Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no ac…

Or you can continuously keep your code / systems up to date and never get wedged into a nearly impossible situation of having to rewrite 60 year old code (which likely has nothing resembling a test suite nor even a spare piece of compatible hardware to test on).

Re: IRS’ 60-Year-Old IT System Failed on Tax Day Due to New Hardware

#33

Post by thescriptkiddie »

noetic_techy wrote: post #14
49bc wrote: post #4

When they can write AI to understand and implement the entire US tax system, then I’ll start worrying about the incoming AI apocalypse they’re always taking about.

More than likely, it will shoot back a question: "Why the hell did you make this so complex?"

So that every congressman can give their favorite d̶o̶n̶o̶r̶s̶ constituents their very own tax loophole.

Re: IRS’ 60-Year-Old IT System Failed on Tax Day Due to New Hardware

#34

Post by raverbashing »

The question for the industry remains: how do we deal with systems that should be up for 10 years? 25 yrs? 50 yrs? 100 yrs? We didn't even have computers as they exist today 50 years ago.

How do we separate business logic in a self-contained way that can be independent of hardware and (from a certain level) software?

Re: IRS’ 60-Year-Old IT System Failed on Tax Day Due to New Hardware

#35

Post by jacquesm »

favorited wrote: post #2

Fun (scary) fact – significant portions of the IRS tax system is still written in assembly. It's basically the original codebase plus 40 years of additions and patches as the tax code changed. They were working on projects to "elevate" it to Java, because it's pretty difficult to maintain it as-is.

> Fun (scary) fact – significant portions of the IRS tax system is still written in assembly.

Why is that scary? It has decades of real life testing applied to it if there were any obvious bugs they would have been found by now.

Assembly is just another language, it is slower to develop in but there are many examples of high level language issues that are at least as scary as what you could do in assembly. In the end it is all about the processes around your development as much or more than it is about what language you pick. The best way to reduce your chance of bugs is to reduce the size of your project.

https://www.mayerdan.com/ruby/2012/11/11/bugs-per-line-of-co...

Re: IRS’ 60-Year-Old IT System Failed on Tax Day Due to New Hardware

#36

Post by dman »

raverbashing wrote: post #34

The question for the industry remains: how do we deal with systems that should be up for 10 years? 25 yrs? 50 yrs? 100 yrs? We didn't even have computers as they exist today 50 years ago. How do we separate business logic in a self-contained way that can be independent of hardware and (from a certain level) software?

How do you create incentive structures for new employees who have to spend months (years?) coming upto speed with giant state machines before they feel remotely confident of the the effect of their changes? For better or for worse, currently the glory is in writing new systems rather than improving existing ones.

Re: IRS’ 60-Year-Old IT System Failed on Tax Day Due to New Hardware

#37

Post by inlined »

gascan wrote: post #26
favorited wrote: post #2

Fun (scary) fact – significant portions of the IRS tax system is still written in assembly. It's basically the original codebase plus 40 years of additions and patches as the tax code changed. They were working on projects to "elevate" it to Java, because it's pretty difficult to maintain it as-is.

I mean, maintainability aside they are a giant calculator right? You don't need to be running the latest, hippest web platform to do a good job at doing a lot of math. And, will any of the current en-vogue tech still be working in 50 years? If you had to pick, Java does make a lot of sense. Java & C are safe bets for "languages that will stick around for decades".

I imagine processing the data, deciding whom to audit, and tracking the process is more complicated. Heck; they're probably using ML for audit red flags

Re: IRS’ 60-Year-Old IT System Failed on Tax Day Due to New Hardware

#38

Post by cpburns2009 »

mbell wrote: post #32
johnklos wrote: post #18

Something that the kids of IT today will never learn: Never replace anything unless the thing doing the replacing is better than the thing being replaced. The IRS' IT "upgrade" is just a huge money grab. Nobody has the slightest interest or desire to do anything properly - they simply want in on that lucrative IRS money. It's like the saying: "Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no ac…

Or you can continuously keep your code / systems up to date and never get wedged into a nearly impossible situation of having to rewrite 60 year old code (which likely has nothing resembling a test suite nor even a spare piece of compatible hardware to test on).

Small development teams have a hard enough time with that. I can't imagine that is even remotely possible within the bureaucratic framework of a government agency.

Re: IRS’ 60-Year-Old IT System Failed on Tax Day Due to New Hardware

#39

Post by _RPM »

favorited wrote: post #2

Fun (scary) fact – significant portions of the IRS tax system is still written in assembly. It's basically the original codebase plus 40 years of additions and patches as the tax code changed. They were working on projects to "elevate" it to Java, because it's pretty difficult to maintain it as-is.

Should it be written in Go, or Rust?

Re: IRS’ 60-Year-Old IT System Failed on Tax Day Due to New Hardware

#40

Post by Retric »

raverbashing wrote: post #34

The question for the industry remains: how do we deal with systems that should be up for 10 years? 25 yrs? 50 yrs? 100 yrs? We didn't even have computers as they exist today 50 years ago. How do we separate business logic in a self-contained way that can be independent of hardware and (from a certain level) software?

> How do we separate business logic in a self-contained way that can be independent of hardware and (from a certain level) software?

As strange as this may sound, documentation. Software is at it's core rather brittle it's designed to operate inside of a very specific system and trying to make it portable is only reasonable when you know the target ahead of time.

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