Tech Titans Oracle, Red Hat and Google To Help Fix Healthcare.gov

wjcofkc writes "The United States Government has officially called in the calvary over the problems with Healthcare.gov. Tech titans Oracle, Red Hat and Google have been tapped to join the effort to fix the website that went live a month ago, only to quickly roll over and die. While a tech surge of engineers to fix such a complex problem is arguably not the greatest idea, if you're going to do so, you might as well bring in the big guns. The question is: can they make the end of November deadline?"

Comments

Answer: No.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nine women cannot make a baby in one month.

Re:Answer: No.

[BasilBrush]

Nine women cannot make a baby in one month.

True, but the website already exists. If it's a case of fixing defects rather than re-architecting from scratch, there's no reason why multiple teams can't work on different parts of the system. And multiple people within a team can't work on different defects.

Defect fixing is indeed somewhat scalable.

Re:Answer: No.

[turkeydance]

the Mythical Man Month returns

Re:Answer: No.

[dmbasso]

It all depends on the quality of the existing code base. More often than not, it's better to start from scratch.

Re:Answer: No.

[MightyMartian]

The last time I had to "re-architect" an existing website, I ended up putting in roughly twice the amount of time as the original "architects" (and I use that word very very loosely). Believe me, there's a lot of shit out there that will require a lot more effort to fix than originally went into building it.

Re:Answer: No.

[sexconker]

there's no reason why multiple teams can't work on different parts of the system

You've never worked on anything with multiple teams working on different parts, have you?
It never fucking works. You need knowledgeable oversight.

Re:Answer: No.

[icebike]

Nine women cannot make a baby in one month.

But I bet even one woman could spell cavalry, and know the difference.

Slashdot editors wanted. No Experience needed. We wouldn't know what to do with experience if we tripped over it.

Re:Answer: No.

[MightyMartian]

Exactly. I think the Linux kernel is a damned good example of how a large number of developers working in very different kinds of development environments, some working in side-projects like Netfilter, are coordinated by one guy intimately acquainted with the kernel.

You can say what you like about Linus's attitude at times, but the fact that the Linux kernel is running on everything from supercomputers to be Nexus 7 tablet tells you that there is a way to successfully and productively organize multiple teams to produce a successful software product.

Re:Answer: No.

[Anonymous Coward]

That article is so full of contradictory statements it's ridiculous. Which isn't to say I'm defending the excessively sugar-coated defenses the administration made in 2010. But 94 million is an upper limit, and it's mostly composed of private insurers and private companies purposefully choosing to change coverage, not because the law mandates it.

And let's not forget about the 20-40 million people who will be unable to keep their lack of insurance coverage. What's the difference between being uninsured and underinsured? Maybe I should be allowed to get a car insurance policy with a $100 limit. I mean, freedom, right?

If you want to diss the ACA, then diss it on its merits.

I hate taxes as much as the next guy. More, in fact. My combined income is over $240k/year, almost all earned income, so its taxed heavily. It's a gigantic bitch. But you know what? I grew up in poverty, in foster homes. I benefited from a safety net. And the elder members of my family all depend on some sort of government assistance. So I just suck it up, because as the extremely conservative Justice Holmes once said, taxes are the price of civilization. And this civilization let's me make almost a quarter of a million per year. You think I could make that in Mexico, Brazil, or China?

The penalties for having no insurance are is like $150/year. If you can't afford that, then you have bigger problems--and in any event, if you couldn't afford it the government would pay for it.

Re:Answer: No.

[erroneus]

Interestingly said.

Even if by some miracle, they bring something up, it doesn't fix the actual problems. Ridiculously increased rates, it's a new tax on everyone, lies about keeping one's old policy and a general over-all burdon on the remaining who are employed above the poverty line.

Re:Answer: No.

[craigminah]

...and let's hope the US Government has enough sense to not pay the clowns who built that FUBARed website. Interesting Michelle Obama’s Princeton classmate is executive at company that built Obamacare website and won the contract in a rare no-bid contract. Very fishy...

Re:Answer: No.

[BitZtream]

No.

Almost universally in software development, starting from scratch is a stupid fucking idea repeated by inexperienced developers.

Now a bunch of slashdot will tell me I'm wrong, but that doesn't change the previous statement, just reenforces it.

Re:Answer: No.

[Beeftopia]

Almost universally in software development, starting from scratch is a stupid fucking idea repeated by inexperienced developers.

For working, debugged, stable code that looks messy, that's almost always true. But this site failed immediately when put under load.

Now, if the site logic for ONE user is sound, then they could preserve that and put in the infrastructure needed to handle the sheer electricity of thousands of requests per minute. That's what Google is known for, with their vast datacenters and ability to load balance. Oracle is known for databases able to handle high concurrent transaction loads. Red Hat can provide support on a reliable, robust operating system (Linux).

For 654 million dollars, hopefully the government got the logic and blueprints down for how one user is supposed to progress. Now, the folks who know how to handle the sheer electrical volume of the massive numbers of connections can perhaps install that missing, essential portion of the website. IF of course, the design and logic of the site for one user is sound.

Calvary? Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's cavalry.

if only they could fix healthcare.gov by

[Anonymous Coward]

bombing the hell out of it!

Brooks Law

[mccrew]

Brooks Law states "adding manpower to a late software project makes it later".

Re:Just say no

[zippthorne]

In that scenario, we'd actually be worse off - the ones with principles wouldn't be working on it...

huh?

[Charliemopps]

I can understand Google and Redhat... but Oracle? Talk about having a fox in the hen-house.

Re:Will they teach Economics?

[Skapare]

The government should have done it in-house, using directly hired citizens as developers and project managers. Use top developers that fully understand the selected technology. This site is something that will be changing a lot over many years, so continued staff where most developers already know how it's built would keep it upgraded.

Why can't they start over ?

[Taco Cowboy]

Instead of fixing a bunch of hopeless code, why can't they start over the damn thing - with a properly designed paradigm ?

Re:Why can't they start over ?

[Runaway1956]

That's my idea. Government hired an incompetent contractor to build something. They built a freaking MESS. Just clear it all out. Sure, examine the code, see what the ideas were when they built the site. Take the best ideas, and rebuild the ideas, from the ground up.

Years ago, I was called in to a construction job, where the previous foreman had really screwed up. He built a foundation and wall in the wrong place. We didn't try to make the wall fit into the plan - we wrecked the frigging wall, poured a new footer, and built the wall on top of our new footer.

The site designers need to do the equivalent. Consider the "blueprint", see where everything went wrong, tear out the screwups, and build from the ground up. If that should happen to mean that not one single line of code remains, then so be it. If it means that 1/4 or 1/2 or even 3/4 of the code can be reused - fine. Just get it working. And, do it for less than another half billion freaking dollars!!

Re:Why can't they start over ?

[gweihir]

Actually, government hired far too many contractors as everybody wanted a piece. Now they are doing the same again. Have one competent entity fix this mess, not a lot of them and especially not a lot of them that are not used to cooperating.

Re:Why can't they start over ?

[gtall]

HHS was supposed to provide the supervisory role. Problem was they didn't have the experience to do such a thing. In a way, they were stuck. If they'd've hired a single contractor, they'd still be in litigation because the others would have sued. Hiring many meant they couldn't use a single company to ride shotgun because companies don't play well together in shotgun marriages.

They should have had the NSA do it. I hear they are quite good a building large systems.