Contractors See Weeks of Work on Health Site • Hacker News Board

Re: Contractors See Weeks of Work on Health Site

#31

Post by jussij » Mon, Oct 21, 2013, 4:59 AM UTC

EdgarVerona wrote: post #18

jussij wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is they're counting code from existing packages used to create the site. So for example, if they used Java, that line count is including the lines of code found in the JDK. I see no other way of getting to such a large number.

I don't see it approaching that even with the lines of code for their existing packages. For instance, this is old and out of date, but you could extrapolate a ballpark estimate out of it... looks like back in 2007 or so JDK was about 6 million LoC ( http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~darcy/OpenJdkDevGuide/OpenJdkDev... ). Even if it increased tenfold since then, it's barely making a dent in that 500 million LoC number.

Don't forget to add in the lines of code for the Linux kernel on which they are running and the MySQL database etc etc.

I kept reading the article and on the last you find this gem:

According to one specialist, the Web site contains about 500 million lines of software code. By comparison, a large bank’s computer system is typically about one-fifth that size.

That to me suggests the number is bogus, because it is so obviously a quote from someone who has no idea what they are talking about.

Re: Contractors See Weeks of Work on Health Site

#32

Post by jlgreco » Mon, Oct 21, 2013, 5:00 AM UTC

ivanbrussik wrote: post #13

they might be exaggerating that by including all of the respective libraries used etc, or just exaggerating in general (like the gvt tends to do)

Even if they counted PHP's lines of code, that would only throw on less than a million more lines.

I strongly suspect that somebody is full of shit.

Re: Contractors See Weeks of Work on Health Site

#33

Post by kiddz » Mon, Oct 21, 2013, 5:02 AM UTC

The USPTO should see this as an opportunity to have a mail-in form which would create redundancy and also obscure these problems.

Re: Contractors See Weeks of Work on Health Site

#34

Post by javert » Mon, Oct 21, 2013, 5:03 AM UTC

DigitalSea wrote: post #24

Sounds like a load of crap to me. Seriously, 500 million lines of code? I bet not even mission-critical code written to power NASA spacecraft and satellites are anywhere near that length. I propose they give the project to the HN community, divide up the $400 million figure amongst the participants and give us a weekend and I bet we'll have more to show than that of the so-called developers the government hired. I am…

While I completely agree with you in general, a nit pick:

> I bet not even mission-critical code written to power NASA spacecraft and satellites are anywhere near that length.

That doesn't seem like a good example. You want to keep the code in those kinds of things to a minimum, and that's probably not too hard.

Re: Contractors See Weeks of Work on Health Site

#35

Post by lukeqsee » Mon, Oct 21, 2013, 5:04 AM UTC

joeblau wrote: post #22

jussij wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is they're counting code from existing packages used to create the site. So for example, if they used Java, that line count is including the lines of code found in the JDK. I see no other way of getting to such a large number.

What was the site written in?

Assembly, to protect your privacy.

Re: Contractors See Weeks of Work on Health Site

#36

Post by burgreblast » Mon, Oct 21, 2013, 5:06 AM UTC

ha. I'll bet it's: LoC * Num_servers = 500M

At least, that sounds like a great way to charge gubbmints by LoC.

Re: Contractors See Weeks of Work on Health Site

#37

Post by fmax30 » Mon, Oct 21, 2013, 5:07 AM UTC

Who told them to use vanilla php to make everything , 500 million lines of code is an astounding amount of code . Next step put up a disclosure/FOI request for the source code of the healthcare.gov so that we can know what they were writing in there.

Re: Contractors See Weeks of Work on Health Site

#38

Post by spikels » Mon, Oct 21, 2013, 5:07 AM UTC

"One specialist said that as many as five million lines of software code may need to be rewritten before the Web site runs properly."

Yikes! I don't think these "experts" are going to be fixing this anytime soon.

Re: Contractors See Weeks of Work on Health Site

#39

Post by strict9 » Mon, Oct 21, 2013, 5:09 AM UTC

While 500 million sounds really far fetched, this is the point at which projects explode with bloat and repeated code:

> the separately designed databases and pieces of software from 55 contractors work together.

Factor in dealing with the multitude of state laws and companies they are interacting with, and you have a recipe for problems.

A lot of armchair quarterback technologists, but not a lot of precedent to compare computerizing a healthcare system in this way to.

Re: Contractors See Weeks of Work on Health Site

#40

Post by MartinCron » Mon, Oct 21, 2013, 5:09 AM UTC

bluefinity wrote: post #23

conover wrote: post #2

That's a staggering amount of code. Nearly unbelievable. To put that in perspective, Windows XP was 45 million lines of code[0]. [0] https://m.facebook.com/windows/posts/155741344475532

Somewhat surprisingly, Visual Studio 2012 has 50 million lines of code. [0] It's kind of weird to think that VS 2012 has more lines of code than Windows XP. [0]: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudio/archive/2012/06/20/the-...

VS 2012 does a lot more.