Re: Still Going - IRS Still Using JFK-Era Computers

In comp.os.linux.misc 186282@ud0s4.net <186283@ud0s4.net> wrote:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/yourmoney/taxes/article-13688929/IRS-worker-reveals-reasons-call-hold-tax-delays.html
 
Decades-old computer systems 'paid for by the Kennedy
administration' and terrible management are the reasons
for poor customer service at the IRS, an insider has claimed.
 
...
 
  However there's ANOTHER issue ... one guys I knew
  in the biz even yet come across. It's the SOFTWARE.

Yep, something most forget about when arguing "old computers still in
use"

  A lot of it was written in COBOL by those arrow-tie
  Dilberts LONG ago. It's GREAT software - those square-
  lookin' nerd guys were REALLY GOOD.
 
  But good software requires good MONEY ... and a lot
  of biz/govt entities can't afford having the good
  old standards re-created for modern hardware. Can
  barely afford (or find) people who can do little
  patches on what is.

Not to mention the fact that the new stuff has to produce the same
answers as the old stuff it replaces, and COBOL excels at "money
related" computing.  I can only imagine how much money and time it
would take to get a crew of H1B's to recreate, likely in Java, code to
compute the same "dollar amounts" as is being computed by the old COBOL
code.

  So, they can't afford to, don't DARE to, replace that 60 year old
  hardware and software.  It works, so LEAVE IT ALONE.

In theory, they should be able to move the software to newer hardware
(if they needed newer hardware in any case) by recompiling it.  Sadly,
they have also likely lost the source long ago, so they are well and
truly stuck.

And if they have lost the source (likely) then they are left with
having that crew of H1B's having to reverse engineer the existing COBOL
programs to workout how to recreate them (accurate to the penny,
inclusing all edge cases).  And given what I've seen from the typical
H1B govt.  contract coder, not one of them could "reverse engineer" an
existing system if they were given infinite time and money to so.