Bluesky

500% of every "replace the legacy system" project is even discovering what the legacy system does.

There are no specs. Well, they are, but they're wrong and onsolete, and never encompass use cases that you didn't even know were going on and only appear when you switch over and people scream that the tools that use an embedded copy of Opera for the Nintendo Wii to access their financial services break.

I work with a ten year old Access database I'm trying to migrate to SQL. Should be easy, right?

Except it's got over 170 macro driven subquery chains accessing multiple legacy ERP systems, is the only source of their KPIs (these legacy systems can't generate them on their own), and is the only system that can publish the KPIs to the multiple Sharepoint lists that the entire company relies upon.

Despite the fact I have over 20 years experience migrating legacy systems, it's taken me close to a year to track down all of the dependencies, and this system is built in an easy language (SQL vs COBOL), is a tiny fraction of the size of the SSI databases, and is 30 years younger than the systems running social security (at least).

There is absolutely no way they have any chance of modernizing the social security system in under five years. It would take at least a decade to do it properly.

DOGE won't just break the system. They will fuck it up beyond all belief, to the point where it will never work properly again.

If you're on Social Security, be ready for payments to just stop. Expect it. It's their end goal.

And pray the last administration took backups.

Of course this will fail. Everyone with a recognizable skill level in programming will tell you that. That's why Musk probably uses kids that have not achieved the necessary skills to know that.

Good that this is not my social security system they are breaking, and the biggest threat to me is me overeating on popcorn.

Best case scenario, they'll steal the money, never deliver anything and leave the old system in place

I have said this elsewhere, but it bears repeating. Unless you keep meticulous records of what you have paid into Social Security, it would be wise to log into https://www.ssa.gov/myaccount/ First you need to log into your social security account. If you have never done this is can be a bit cumbersome, but better to get it figured out now than later. Then once you have been able to log in to “my Social Security” you will see a “Your Social Security Statement” on that landing page. It will allow you do download a PDF that has your projected benefit and your earnings records by work year.

Edit.. probably best to download the pdf and the xml.

Even if the plan it not to touch the COBOL code and replace the whole system with a new one written from scratch, a timeline of several years would be incompetently naive. Proposing to do it in months is just idiotic. [software dev, 40 yrs exp)

A software dev friend of mine works in autonomous vehicles. He is certain a Tesla cannot reach an acceptably safe full safe driving level without lidar and it's widely known in the industry. But they push on anyway. They don't care. They will say or do anything to achieve their goals.

"Oh no, we broke that, shame the backups didn't work, whoopsies"

unless they want to destroy social security.

👆 😜

We should be asking about what the military generals think about all of this.

spoiler: They want to destroy social security.

We should execute doge. They are doing violence to all of us

Musk and Thiel have their indentured servitude startup ready to go,it seems.

"unless'...

Well guess we don't have to pay for social security.

Can they stream this migration? It would be a solid revenue stream for a long time

I took a college COBOL class in 1979. I had to write my program out on stacks of punch cards. Had to stand in line at the computer center for the grad students to run it on the University computer. They just gave you a "it ran" or "it failed" and a printout on sheets of those endless rolls of papers with perforations and holes on both sides?

Good times.