Technology

This has the stench of junior engineer all over it. This rewrite will go way over budget and come limping across the finish line late, with more bugs and less features than the system it replaces. I guarantee it.

"ROFL"

Signed, everyone who has been involved in migrating a codebase before.

As long as Big Ballz is running things, I’m sure it will all be fine!

/s

I've worked on teams converting legacy code for most of my life. The planning for something like this would take longer than six months.

If this proceeds in Trump's corrupt government, Elon will get the contract, will claim it is too broken to salvage, and will privatize it. The only way this goes anywhere is if Trump and musk stand to gain money, and they stand to gain a lot.

They're really playing with fire here.

So many MAGA supporters are seniors who are entirely dependent on OASDI. If Trump's minions break this, we're going to see torches and pitchforks strapped to electric scooters and golf carts coming out of Florida retirement communities in droves.

Ah yes, a classic tale...

"We're going to take this perfectly efficient and functional COBOL code base and rewrite it in Java! And we'll do it in a few months!"

So many more competent people and organizations than them have already tried this and spectacularly crashed and burned. There are literal case studies on these types of failed endeavors.

I bet they'll do it in Waterfall too.

It's interesting. If they use Grok, this could well be the deathknell for vibe programming (at least for now). It's just fucking tragic that their hubris will cause grief and pain to so many Americans - and cost the lives of more than a few.

Edit: Fixed some typos.

Gonna blow up the database as many times as they blow up SpaceX rockets.

Australian here.

They are robbing you

This is like a new programmer coming in to their new job, seeing the code isn't perfect and saying they could rebuild the entire thing and do it better in a month.

There are only two reasons softwares goes for decades without being replaced:

1. It’s so unimportant that nobody uses it
2. It’s so important that the last major bug was squashed 15 years ago

"…but sir, we only know Node.js…"

In theory, it wouldn't be a necessarily bad idea to port the COBOL code to something more modern, but I cannot trust Muskrat and a few vibe coder youngsters with this task.

How this will go:

DOGE: "Okay Grok. Convert this COBOL code into Python."

Dumb AI: "Certainly! Here you go."

System crashes and exposes all Americans' SSNs

DOGE: "Fuckin' DEI hires...!"

step 1. rewrite into spaghetti code

step 2. nobody understands the new code, so the govt has to contract elon musk for code maintenance forever

step 3. profit

These comments are completely missing the truth.

They have zero intention of rebuilding anything, this is just an excuse to destroy SSA ...

They're not rebuilding anything. They're just adding back doors everywhere. If anyone hasn't learned yet, these are crackpot script kiddies at best. Even If somehow control is take away from them, they are now going to definitely have to redo the entire thing to make sure none of their shit code survives.

I'm sure having a corrupt non-government narcissist rewrite the code for SS will be fine. It's not like he could leave any code hidden in there for his own purposes, like controlling or redirecting payments or anything.

The first step towards privatizing an industry is eroding public confidence in the existing program. They have absolutely no intention of improving the program, they just want to make it shitty enough that people stop believing in it. Once that happens, 45 will start shilling, and some lucky company will swoop in and take it over.

Textbook...

Hey asshole - it works - don't fix it.

~~risking~~ guaranteeing

if (!=white) {benefits=false}