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Healthcare.gov technology stack (infographic)

thedoctorweighsin.com

11–20 of 58 posts

Re: Healthcare.gov technology stack (infographic)

#11

A friend analyzed the page and noted that they didn't minify or combine anything. "One obvious reason is that they're serving unminified and unconcatenated Javascript and CSS files. A single page load causes 92 requests to the server, and they're not using a CDN for any of that. They're also not setting the Cache-Control and Expires headers, so the browser isn't caching many of those files, including on 80k file full…

While that is an egregious amount of requests, it's not the reason the site is broken. Based on my experience as a user and poking around quickly in Firebug, the issues are largely server-side.

Re: Healthcare.gov technology stack (infographic)

#12

I think the interesting lesson here is that even marketplaces should be competitively constructed - i.e., there should be significant price-competitive pressure to deliver goods and services; just letting the government to facilitate marketplaces removes price competition from the marketplace itself. I'm not suggesting that the government create a meta-marketplace for health insurance marketplaces. Just that it isn't…

The government should have had specified the APIs and see what vendors created the best implementations.

Re: Healthcare.gov technology stack (infographic)

#13
post #9

A friend analyzed the page and noted that they didn't minify or combine anything. "One obvious reason is that they're serving unminified and unconcatenated Javascript and CSS files. A single page load causes 92 requests to the server, and they're not using a CDN for any of that. They're also not setting the Cache-Control and Expires headers, so the browser isn't caching many of those files, including on 80k file full…

[deleted]

True, but it's not like minifying and serving from a CDN will make anything worse, and it could improve things quite a bit.

Re: Healthcare.gov technology stack (infographic)

#14

A friend analyzed the page and noted that they didn't minify or combine anything. "One obvious reason is that they're serving unminified and unconcatenated Javascript and CSS files. A single page load causes 92 requests to the server, and they're not using a CDN for any of that. They're also not setting the Cache-Control and Expires headers, so the browser isn't caching many of those files, including on 80k file full…

Although I do agree with your final point, serving static files is no issue for modern web servers.

Re: Healthcare.gov technology stack (infographic)

#15
post #9

A friend analyzed the page and noted that they didn't minify or combine anything. "One obvious reason is that they're serving unminified and unconcatenated Javascript and CSS files. A single page load causes 92 requests to the server, and they're not using a CDN for any of that. They're also not setting the Cache-Control and Expires headers, so the browser isn't caching many of those files, including on 80k file full…

[deleted]

It is, however more than just a smell: a front end of such an egregious turditude doesn't just uninspire confidence in any of the system - these poor practices demonstrate that whoever is in charge of the checks and balances hasn't done their job.

Re: Healthcare.gov technology stack (infographic)

#16
post #11

A friend analyzed the page and noted that they didn't minify or combine anything. "One obvious reason is that they're serving unminified and unconcatenated Javascript and CSS files. A single page load causes 92 requests to the server, and they're not using a CDN for any of that. They're also not setting the Cache-Control and Expires headers, so the browser isn't caching many of those files, including on 80k file full…

While that is an egregious amount of requests, it's not the reason the site is broken. Based on my experience as a user and poking around quickly in Firebug, the issues are largely server-side.

True, it is just an additional data point. You have to wonder, if they can't minify their JS or even run the pages through the Yahoo YSlow tool, what is the quality of the backend?

Re: Healthcare.gov technology stack (infographic)

#17
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While that is an egregious amount of requests, it's not the reason the site is broken. Based on my experience as a user and poking around quickly in Firebug, the issues are largely server-side.

True, it is just an additional data point. You have to wonder, if they can't minify their JS or even run the pages through the Yahoo YSlow tool, what is the quality of the backend?

I think we really don't have to wonder at this point.

Re: Healthcare.gov technology stack (infographic)

#18
post #6
post #3

Too bad I didn't get this contract...

I know what you mean, I could've totally made a failing website for $100 million max. I would have saved them money.

For government projects, sometimes they don't want to save money at all. They are more interested in how money can get in someone's pocket.
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