Social Security systems contain tens of millions of lines of code written in COBOL, an archaic programming language. Safely rewriting that code would take years—DOGE wants it done in months.
My company actually wrote their flagship software in COBOL starting in the 80s, and we’re only now six years into rewriting everything in a more modern language with probably four years to go.
I can’t imagine trying to start such a project like rewriting all of Social Security and thinking it will take months. You have to be a special kind of fatuous to unironically think that.
I was briefly employed at a firm that maintained the sales commission software for a large telecom firm.
It was 1.5 million lines of VB6, though VB8 was already three years old. Nobody knew all of it, so they couldn’t possibly rewrite it to handle all the edge cases and special incentives we kept having to add.
Except maybe the lone QA person, who would frequently begin sobbing at her desk. And we could all hear it because it was an open plan office and we weren’t allowed to wear headphones.
Functional, yes. But rarely are these sorts of things efficient. They’re covered in decades of cruft and workarounds.
Which just makes them that much harder to port to a different language. Especially by some 19 year old who goes by “Big Balls”
My company actually wrote their flagship software in COBOL starting in the 80s, and we’re only now six years into rewriting everything in a more modern language with probably four years to go.
I can’t imagine trying to start such a project like rewriting all of Social Security and thinking it will take months. You have to be a special kind of fatuous to unironically think that.
I was briefly employed at a firm that maintained the sales commission software for a large telecom firm.
It was 1.5 million lines of VB6, though VB8 was already three years old. Nobody knew all of it, so they couldn’t possibly rewrite it to handle all the edge cases and special incentives we kept having to add.
Except maybe the lone QA person, who would frequently begin sobbing at her desk. And we could all hear it because it was an open plan office and we weren’t allowed to wear headphones.
That job was so bad I quit and began freelancing.