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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

#141

Post by reaperducer »

s2g wrote: post #84
reaperducer wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or you can continuously keep your code / systems up to date Easy to say as a grunt, but businesses (and governments) are run by managers and accountants. What you describe is upgrading for upgrading's sake. If a system isn't broken, there's no point or financial reason to replace it. Imagine trying to upgrade a system with incredibly complex data on a BILLION users that has to work 24/7, then deal with massive data…

Imagine if you were an airline that didn't bother to maintain planes. When you build software you should plan to maintain it. Bug fixes, features, upgrades, etc...

>I think you're over-estimating the amount of data involved.

A better analogy would be if you were an airline and kept upgrading airplanes before they were needed.

Airplanes (especially private ones) fly for decades and decades.

No one is suggesting that the IRS systems weren't maintained. Obviously they were since they exist on virtualized hardware.

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

#142

Post by ror6ax »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #120
DrScump wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, it's not just about "glory". If you work in "obsolete" languages/environments, you likely will be perceived as less valuable to your next employer.

This right here is a huge problem with our industry. If you're not jumping from employer to employer every 1.7 years, you're labeled as out of date. It takes some really talented developers to truly understand some of these old systems. They should be given the proper respect they deserve.

In reality it often means these systems are built in bad, ineffective way. Most likely in bad, ineffective languages/technologies. You don't need 17 years to be able to contribute to Apache Spark. You would not call that a small project, would you?

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

#143

Post by hw89y24y89 »

cptskippy wrote: post #54

I feel like the authors of this article are being very misleading by using broader terms where they could be more specific, like using system where they could instead say software. The IRS isn't running 60 year old hardware, and the failure was in hardware that was just 18 months old. But because the IRS is running software that is 60 years old, the authors can claim the "system" dates back to the 1960s. It's also cl…

Or you're more sensitive to the specifics being that is the bubble you exist in

It's not hard to see the entire "ecosystem" as a "system" generically.

I am really wondering what this low-hanging pedantry is accomplishing? Has it educated anyone outside the HN community?

It seems clear you don't entirely understand what you're talking about; headlines are not for tech they're for general consumption.

"I wish everyone did a better job of understanding the world on my terms, regardless of whether the effort is entirely worth it for them or not."

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

#144

Post by georgeecollins »

jkaplowitz wrote: post #121
ep103 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, suggest that this is a low quality article, and if journalistic enterprises want to report on subject matter, they should have their articles approved by people knowledgeable in that subject matter.

Unfortunately that's true for most journalism. It's just that we techies are not usually subject-matter experts in the many other areas where they make mistakes. Consistently high-quality in-depth reporting is the exception and is not a threshold most media will accept as a publication bottleneck.

My Dad used to say: "The Economist "(magazine)"sounds authoritative until you read an article about something you are an expert in."

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

#145

Post by PopePompous »

dman wrote: post #36
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.

"state machines" - nice pun in this context.

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

#146

Post by lostapathy »

reaperducer wrote: post #141
s2g wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine if you were an airline that didn't bother to maintain planes. When you build software you should plan to maintain it. Bug fixes, features, upgrades, etc...

>I think you're over-estimating the amount of data involved. A better analogy would be if you were an airline and kept upgrading airplanes before they were needed. Airplanes (especially private ones) fly for decades and decades. No one is suggesting that the IRS systems weren't maintained. Obviously they were since they exist on virtualized hardware.

Airplanes get upgraded all the time - fresh seats, newer gps tech, etc.

Software systems like this get “mainenance” of the bare minimum sense - think a new battery after the original is dead.

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

#147

Post by xapata »

georgeecollins wrote: post #144
jkaplowitz wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately that's true for most journalism. It's just that we techies are not usually subject-matter experts in the many other areas where they make mistakes. Consistently high-quality in-depth reporting is the exception and is not a threshold most media will accept as a publication bottleneck.

My Dad used to say: "The Economist "(magazine)"sounds authoritative until you read an article about something you are an expert in."

True for all journalism.

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

#148

Post by occams_chainsaw »

heartbreak wrote: post #130
DrScump wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be a huge exploit/privacy risk.

Right because that's what we say about the Linux kernel too, right? If IRS is the maintainer, they still review changes. And so do all of us. If someone slips in an exploit, we'll catch it the same way every other open source project does.

The kernel is an entirely different beast. The systems in question have been around three times longer, and have been closed from the start. A hardware caching issue bringing the whole thing down probably means it's closely tied into the hardware, and difficult to contribute to. Obscurity isn't security, but it may not be the best idea to pop the lid off everything at once in such a case.

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

#149

Post by yazaddaruvala »

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?

This is a relatively solved problem. Abstractions.

50 years ago the IRS had to build a webserver, the servlet application code, it had to build in fault tolerance without SQS or Kafka.

If built today, the IRS' entire system would probably run on Rails with JRuby, deployed with Docker and K8s, and be 1000x more maintainable.

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

#150

Post by justinator »

yazaddaruvala wrote: post #149
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?

This is a relatively solved problem. Abstractions. 50 years ago the IRS had to build a webserver, the servlet application code, it had to build in fault tolerance without SQS or Kafka. If built today, the IRS' entire system would probably run on Rails with JRuby, deployed with Docker and K8s, and be 1000x more maintainable.

Oh yes, 1000x maintainable with 1000x more lines in the codebase.

Speak softly into my ear, these little lies you like to tell me.

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