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Pentagon fails audit for sixth year in a row

breakingdefense.com

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Re: Pentagon fails audit for sixth year in a row

#261

Post by jrockway »

uticus wrote: post #44
MrMetlHed wrote: post #38

Worked with a guy ten years ago that would obsessively read these reports from the Pentagon. Here's a couple of his stories about the matter: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/pentagon/ and https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-mari... (very old and I apologize for my horrific javascript at the time.) It sounds like nothing has changed. Relevant to this crowd, maybe: "Most of the Cobol code the P…

Of course, devil's advocate would point out COBOL in 60s was written with a lot more focus on lasting in general. They didn't largely have the same general attitude of 'we iterate quickly with our script kiddies' as is prevalent today. Not that all software from then was wonderful. Or that COBOL magically guarantees great code. But, on the flip side, you can't say the code base isn't battle-hardened (to various liter…

This just sounds like survivorship bias to me. I am sure there is a lot of junk COBOL that killed the companies that relied on it. Nobody cares today because the business is gone.

Something that's interesting to think about is that because the cost of changing COBOL is so high now, only the most important change requests actually get implemented. Compare that to a team that can develop and ship a change the same day; their efficiency leads to more requests that end up being bad ideas. The Pentagon has designed a system to ensure that only the most well-thought-out ideas make it into production, they just went about it in a very strange way.

Re: Pentagon fails audit for sixth year in a row

#262

Post by jrockway »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #254
satvikpendem wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> using today's (quality: average B2B startup) programmers and today's methodologies that will write software for 40 years. I'm not sure I would trust these people over those of the past, regardless of what they say they will accomplish, Chesterton's Fence, and the Lindy Effect, and all.

I imagine that is exactly what: >spend more money on business analysis up front. Entails. But sure, if the government doesn't want to pay for that quality, they can spend just as much or more resurrecting Cobol devs in cryo-stasis in 2099

I don't think they have to keep COBOL devs in cryostasis. Some sufficiently motivated individual could likely learn it today. There are even programmers alive right now that would see a large legacy system and not immediately suggest a rewrite on their first day. It's rare but it can happen!

Re: Pentagon fails audit for sixth year in a row

#263

Post by MattGrommes »

I've been reading The Declassification Engine (https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/fb013174-5d21-4ddb-ba64-...), a history of secrecy in the US, and it talks a lot about the culture of avoiding accountability in the military. They refuse to allow civilian oversight of any kind if they can avoid it and have since WWII. I doubt failing an audit is causing many people to lose sleep.

It's a good book, if completely infuriating, and worth reading.

Re: Pentagon fails audit for sixth year in a row

#264

Post by datavirtue »

jongjong wrote: post #228
omginternets wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It definitely is not.

WTF. I worked on some high exposure projects as a senior dev and never a final offer above $130k USD. Even after haggling hard at a company I had been at for 3 years and they told me I was their top, highest paid engineer and it led me to quit. Then I got approached by Facebook to work in London HQ and the offer they were dangling was £100GBP which was about $130k USD. Highest offer I ever got before I even got to th…

I just quit a $180k job for a $125k job. I did it to join a team that I want to work with, and people that I can trust. I used to waddle out of bed around 9am and quit at 2-3pm after hours or boredom. Now I jump out of bed at 5am and don't quit until 4 pm--sometimes I spend all day traveling. I about cry at night because I love my job so much.

Re: Pentagon fails audit for sixth year in a row

#266

Post by bumby »

herewulf wrote: post #258
bumby wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you, but I’d venture to guess most of those companies would use “combat” in that sense as an analogy. The DoD does not.

Yet the DoD's bureaucracy is neither combat nor inspection ready.

I tend to think the combat portion is a matter of scope. It’s hard to do everything, everywhere, all at once regardless if that’s on a politicians wishlist. The only force noted as “strong” by the Heritage Foundation readiness index is the Marine Corps and that’s a result of acknowledging they are a one-war organization of limited scope. That all goes to say the scope of the DoD is unlike any other organization on earth, so quips like “well, companies pass these inspections all the time!” is of little value.

Re: Pentagon fails audit for sixth year in a row

#267

Post by airstrike »

HideousKojima wrote: post #197
airstrike wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and if that future revenue is N times greater than you would otherwise get without debt, then it's still better to take on debt. Would you rather have 90% of $1M or 100% of $800k?

>if That single word is doing all of the heavy lifting for you. "If" the housing market will never crash, then it's a surefire safe investment! Better buy tons of houses to flip on credit. There's no guarantee that your debt/investment will succeed, which is why banks try (and often enough, fail) to price in risk with things like varying interest rates, collateral, etc.

the 90% accounts for the "if". my point is there an expected value for the future revenue amount, subject to your own assumptions about the probability of each outcome and your discount rate for the value of that money over time

in scenarios where your expected value discounted to present value is greater than the alternative, you make the investment. it's really finance 101... it's just NPV

Re: Pentagon fails audit for sixth year in a row

#268

Post by trealira »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #158
ebiester wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can build you a team using today's (quality: average B2B startup) programmers and today's methodologies that will write software for 40 years. It will just cost twice as much as the team that iterates quickly. It will cost more because I will spend more money on business analysis up front. I will spend more money writing automated tests. Most importantly, I will maintain my own toolchain and libraries or pay someon…

The trick is to use JS. (Not anything that compiles to it) It will be guaranteed to run in 100 years time. Any other language can die or have incompatibility issues. Over that timespan.

Programming languages haven't even been around for 100 years.

There's no guarantee we'll even be running programs written in C in 2123, let alone ones written in JavaScript. 100 years from now is a long time.

Re: Pentagon fails audit for sixth year in a row

#269

Post by trealira »

cwbriscoe wrote: post #217
wmf wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

COBOL in 60s was written with a lot more focus on lasting in general This is the same code that uses two-digit years and doesn't support lowercase letters?

COBOL ONLY USES 2 CHARACTER YEARS IF THAT IS THE WAY IT WAS CODED. PEOPLE DIDN'T THINK THEIR 60'S - 90'S CODE WOULD STILL BE RUNNING IN 2000. COBOL DOES SUPPORT lowercase LETTERS. GET WITH THE TIMES!

> PEOPLE DIDN'T THINK THEIR 60'S - 90'S CODE WOULD STILL BE RUNNING IN 2000.

That serves as evidence against this point, though:

> COBOL in 60s was written with a lot more focus on lasting in general.

Re: Pentagon fails audit for sixth year in a row

#270

Post by remram »

logicchains wrote: post #17
digitalengineer wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Small correction: it’s awful for a poor person to live in debt. If you are quite wealthy there are lots of ways to borrow money and it’s all good!

>If you are quite wealthy there are lots of ways to borrow money and it’s all good! If you have a negative net worth (more debt than assets) you're generally not considered a wealthy person.

On the other hand, their worth is often calculated from stocks that are valued at a price they can't actually sell any significant amount. Stocks in companies that themselves might have never turned a profit...
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