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The IRS’s Effort to Convert Its Assembly Codebase to Java

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Re: The IRS’s Effort to Convert Its Assembly Codebase to Java

#111

Post by throwa32582657 »

I’m sorry but this seems like a fool’s errand. Perhaps Jian Wang is a genius that figured out a way to map IBM 360 assembly to Java that would map to the JVM. Maybe he’s brilliant or maybe his efforts are overhyped by this news piece. It seems that a direct mapping from 360 to the JVM might have made more sense. I suggest that you go look at Rick Hickey’s Clojure code to see how that might look.

Government IT is rife with corruption and incompetence. I have worked for a number of agencies and worked in federal government for many years. Projects are often steered in the direction of contractors and federal employees that benefit from technologies. This is often done to bias incumbent legacy stakeholders and technologies that benefit the federal employees and the contractors that collude to control the systems for their own gains. I have seen the sleaziest contractors enrich themselves at SV IPO levels.

Then came 18F, the hipster government IT revolution. As a senior developer, and maybe I am just some cranky old developer, but the thought of being vetted by this douchebag, fuckin blows my mind: https://18f.gsa.gov/2015/04/08/day-in-the-life-of-talent-man...

Yep, most government and corporate IT is fucked.

Re: The IRS’s Effort to Convert Its Assembly Codebase to Java

#112

Post by EpicBlackCrayon »

whataretensors wrote: post #11
rnestler wrote: post #5

> 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.

Eh, I feel like this is a pretty apt comparison.

Re: The IRS’s Effort to Convert Its Assembly Codebase to Java

#113

Post by vkou »

evilduck wrote: post #97
vkou wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of medical benefits are we talking about? How many years do you have to work for the government to get it? My employer's healthcare plan costs my employer ~20k/year as long as I'm employed, more if I had children, yet for some reason, nobody ever counts that as part of AMAFAGOPL salaries.

There's not a single "federal employee medical plan", there's a set of insurance plan choices like most large employers and you choose what level of risk/deductible and coverage you want for what you're willing to pay. Standard Flex Savings and Health Savings plans are also available. AFAIK you're eligible to sign up on day one of employment just like most employers. My wife is a fed, last year the government contrib…

So, your medical plan evaporates the moment you stop working for most federal agencies? Just like my private employer's medical plan?

And guaranteed pensions are no longer a thing? What is left as a justification for below-market salaries? Employment opportunities in government-dominated towns (which do not have healthy private-sector economies), and more job security?

Re: The IRS’s Effort to Convert Its Assembly Codebase to Java

#114

Post by hueving »

woobar wrote: post #95
jacquesm wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Small contracts are an entirely different matter. Try bagging something >> $1M or defense related. I've worked for the government on small jobs here in the EU a couple of times, as long as you stay below a certain amount you can bypass a ton of requirements. But once you go above that threshold the number of players drops very rapidly and there is no escaping the formal process. If you are capable of selling large co…

Here is one of the two young entrepreneurs (19 and 23 years old) that secured ~$300M DoD contract. So obviously, it is not as bad. ;) In 2005, Packouz (23 years old at the time) joined Efraim Diveroli (19 years old at the time) in Diveroli's arms company AEY Inc. By the end of 2006, the company had won 149 contracts worth around $10.5 million.[1] In early 2007, AEY secured a nearly $300 million U.S. government contra…

Supply contracts are very different than a bid to build something to specifications.

Re: The IRS’s Effort to Convert Its Assembly Codebase to Java

#115

Post by miranda_rights »

aninteger wrote: post #73
jimrandomh wrote: post #8

> Wang was working under streamlined critical pay authority the agency has had since its landmark 1998 restructuring. It gave the IRS 40 slots under which it could pay temporary, full-time employees higher than GS rates. Former Commissioner John Koskinen pointed out Congress did not re-up this authority in 2013, despite his entreaties to former Congressman Jason Chaffetz’s Committee on Oversight and Government Reform…

$103k-$134k sounds very market rate to me... Maybe not for the San Francisco Bay Area but for areas outside of that it seems fine.

The IRS is based in D.C., which also has a high COL. Additionally, that's for the GS-15 paygrade, which requires a PhD and is the highest possible level -- so you can't be paid more than that. The corresponding paygrade for someone with a masters, or with a few years of experience, is $43-$56k[0]. It's definitely below market IMO.

[0] https://www.federalpay.org/gs/2017/GS-9

Re: The IRS’s Effort to Convert Its Assembly Codebase to Java

#116

Post by Deadron »

aninteger wrote: post #73
jimrandomh wrote: post #8

> Wang was working under streamlined critical pay authority the agency has had since its landmark 1998 restructuring. It gave the IRS 40 slots under which it could pay temporary, full-time employees higher than GS rates. Former Commissioner John Koskinen pointed out Congress did not re-up this authority in 2013, despite his entreaties to former Congressman Jason Chaffetz’s Committee on Oversight and Government Reform…

$103k-$134k sounds very market rate to me... Maybe not for the San Francisco Bay Area but for areas outside of that it seems fine.

As a developer in that area, its not super competitive. It is not even close to what a good senior dev is making. They also don't hire people at this level often because you are talking about a director level position. There is huge political push back. This is why its common for the contractors on the project to be paid twice as much as the employees.

Re: The IRS’s Effort to Convert Its Assembly Codebase to Java

#118

Post by sjg007 »

woobar wrote: post #95
jacquesm wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Small contracts are an entirely different matter. Try bagging something >> $1M or defense related. I've worked for the government on small jobs here in the EU a couple of times, as long as you stay below a certain amount you can bypass a ton of requirements. But once you go above that threshold the number of players drops very rapidly and there is no escaping the formal process. If you are capable of selling large co…

Here is one of the two young entrepreneurs (19 and 23 years old) that secured ~$300M DoD contract. So obviously, it is not as bad. ;) In 2005, Packouz (23 years old at the time) joined Efraim Diveroli (19 years old at the time) in Diveroli's arms company AEY Inc. By the end of 2006, the company had won 149 contracts worth around $10.5 million.[1] In early 2007, AEY secured a nearly $300 million U.S. government contra…

I like how they were turned in by their supplier for failing to pay.

Re: The IRS’s Effort to Convert Its Assembly Codebase to Java

#119

Post by sjg007 »

woolvalley wrote: post #109
maxxxxx wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You still can do both if you work for the government.

But you exchange a lower salary for that government job, which makes saving for your 401k & co less effective. There is also the entire calculation of the expected value of money now vs 30 years from now.

Govt salaries aren’t that low.

Re: The IRS’s Effort to Convert Its Assembly Codebase to Java

#120

Post by jfoutz »

jhayward wrote: post #85
ww520 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rather than transcode assembly to a higher-level language. It's better to nail down all the functionality the assembly program provide and re-implement them in the higher-level language. Write language independent tests against the old code and re-run the tests against the new code to make sure things are working feature for feature and bug for bug.

This suggestion is pretty innocent of practical knowledge of the problem. Simply extracting the control structure of the assembly via automation is a huge win. This type of assembly is incredibly dense - it was written for machines with at most, 100's of K of memory. It relies on highly non-local side effects which are very dependent on the data. Things like a reference to a status register bit that was possibly set…

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.
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