No, HealthCare.gov Doesn't Require 500 Million Lines of Code

itwbennett writes: "Half a billion lines of code for a transactional website — more than five times as much code as that behind OS X — just didn't pass the sniff test. But just how many lines of code does it take to generate HealthCare.gov? This question came up on Reddit again last week and it appears that we may now have an answer. One commenter who claimed to have worked on HealthCare.gov as part of the post launch clean-up crew at the end of 2013, provided counts of the lines of code behind HealthCare.gov, broken down by programming/markup language."

Comments

A reddit link?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, full circle. Slashdot stories are now reddit links. Not implying anything. Just wow.

Re:A reddit link?

[i kan reed]

Not implying anything.

You also post without the intent of communicating? Me too. Let's be friends.

*I'm not actually implying we should be friends.

Re:A reddit link?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only that, but you need to go to the link to get the number. They could have just posted that in the summary. Typical click bait. Fuck 'em

Posting AC due to recent politically motivated mod bomb attempts on my account. Fuck the moderators also

-F

Re:A reddit link?

[NatasRevol]

You could have posted it in your comment too....

Re:A reddit link?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't enable click bait sites, so I don't know the number of lines, but I suspect each line costs around ten dollars of taxpayer money.

Re:A reddit link?

[OakDragon]

And now to go post this story on reddit...

Re:A reddit link?

[Cwix]

The user who posted the numbers rounds out by saying 5 - 15 million lines of code. (It is a guess as his numbers only included part of the project.)

Re:A reddit link?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait, Reddit s click bait? I was under the impression it was 100x more relevant than /. here in 2014.

Re:A reddit link?

[Anonymous Coward]

Digg...

Reddit, huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

You know slashdot is no longer relevant when it has to link to reddit for it's content.

Re:Reddit, huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

500 million lines of code, half of which were for the extra apostrophes.

it's means it is.

That too hard to grasp?

646 lines of Perl?

[angularbanjo]

That much Perl?
That's probably the whole app there, with each line being around 10,000 characters of obfuscated self-referencing goodness.

The rest is just quotes from Tolkien.

Re: 646 lines of Perl?

[Anonymous Coward]

I like the 25 lines of VB. I'd pay money to see what those are.

Re:646 lines of Perl?

[babylon93]

You can do anything in 11 lines of Perl. Clearly, if HealthCare.gov had been written in Perl and still took 500,000,000 lines to do so, it would indicate that they had hired on the team responsible for building [http://www.otrs.com/ OTRS] because...OMG.

Re:646 lines of Perl?

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

Let's talk about the 48 DOS batch files with 849 lines of "code" between them.

Re:646 lines of Perl?

[wonderboss]

It originally contained no Perl.
One of the experts they hired to fix it, rewrote the entire front end Perl.
They left the old source code lying around just to help hide the Perl.

Re:646 lines of Perl?

[Anonymous Coward]

It originally contained no Perl.
One of the experts they hired to fix it, rewrote the entire front end Perl.
They left the old source code lying around just to help hide the Perl.

They liked their code, and they got to keep it.

Lucky them.

Re:646 lines of Perl?

[OzPeter]

That much Perl?

Yeah I'm surprised that they were 20 lines short.

Re: 646 lines of Perl?

[heezer7]

Probably code behind to the 1 asp.net file.

Re:646 lines of Perl?

[Anonymous Coward]

Build scripts.

No really that's about right for them to be build scripts.

Re:646 lines of Perl?

[ericloewe]

Holy shit. How the fuck did that happen?

Re:646 lines of Perl?

[glwtta]

One of the experts they hired to fix it, rewrote the entire front end Perl.

So, what's the other 500 lines, then?

Re:646 lines of Perl?

[Ksevio]

The contract also required it to be commented. Unfortunately the expert only got part way though that before reaching the deadline.

Re:646 lines of Perl?

[Anonymous Coward]

The last time I saw DOS build scripts it was for Microfocus COBOL.

Re:646 lines of Perl?

[Tablizer]

ought to be enough for anybody

Re:646 lines of Perl?

[s.petry]

They left the old source code lying around just to get a cut of the original vendors paycheck.

FTFY!

Re:646 lines of Perl?

[Anonymous Coward]

We're using .cmd files in our build scripts for about that many lines in our medical software. Could have well have been .bat files.

Re:646 lines of Perl?

[awshidahak]

Better yet: Why are there both DOS Batch and Bourne Shell scripts in the same project? I could understand that for a multi-platform PC program, but a website?

Re:646 lines of Perl?

[Arancaytar]

You can do anything in one line of Perl.

It might be a very long line, though.

Re:646 lines of Perl?

[Talderas]

You can do practically anything in one long line of Perl.... that doesn't mean it's going to be maintainable.

Re: 646 lines of Perl?

[Anonymous Coward]

And it must be self documenting.

Re:646 lines of Perl?

[Anonymous Coward]

In the words of Larry Wall:
"You want it in one line? Does it have to fit in 80 columns?"
http://groups.google.com/group...

Re:646 lines of Perl?

[Anonymous Coward]

And visual basic................ omfg!

Re:646 lines of Perl?

[Lodragandraoidh]

Actually, I would argue that 99% of the functionality is contained in the 263 lines of Python code. All the rest is presentation...

So now we're trusting blogs face value?

[Whatsmynickname]

Has this been verified? Is this poster even supposed to be posting data like this? Main news channels now repeat blogs true or not as facts, et tu Slashdot

Re:So now we're trusting blogs face value?

[neokushan]

In fairness, it's no more unreliable than the 500million+ lines of code, claim. And somehow much more believable.

Re:So now we're trusting blogs face value?

[Ksevio]

Of course not! We're trusting blogs that cite reddit comments. Since the comment got "Reddit gold" it must be trustworthy.

Re:So now we're trusting blogs face value?

[Anonymous Coward]

"People" believed that because republicans said it, and they too are republican, therefore it must be fact!

Re:So now we're trusting blogs face value?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, this evidence, if true, isn't too far off 500 million. The poster admitted there are backend parts not included. If you also take in to account code written in other systems to provide services and interfaces to this one, the 3.7 million number will grow beyond 4 million and within reasonable rounding of 500 million.

Re: So now we're trusting blogs face value?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can confirm Alex was one of about 6 good CGIFederal coders on the hc.gov effort, and generally a good guy. He was working on SHOP (the small business market) before it got cancelled and him redirected to bug fixes. I haven't counted the lines of code on the sustenance7.0 branch, but it's probably in the ballpark. Posted AC for obvious reasons.

Re:So now we're trusting blogs face value?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ooh, lets count back-end parts like the OS, database, and appserver while we're at it.

Re:So now we're trusting blogs face value?

[Anonymous Coward]

the 500+ million lines is probably the amount that was used by the contractors for billing purposes.

Re:So now we're trusting blogs face value?

[Cwix]

4 million lines of code isn't too far from 500 million? Math is not your strong suit is it.

Re:So now we're trusting blogs face value?

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe both numbers are correct. They copy-pasted about 4 million lines from code-project and billed for 500 million lines.

Re: So now we're trusting blogs face value?

[Wdomburg]

In other words, it's not only on the internet, but it's been vouched for by anonymous sources. It clearly must be true.

Re: So now we're trusting blogs face value?

[Anonymous Coward]

And I'm supposed to take the word of an Anonymous Coward...

Re:So now we're trusting blogs face value?

[pla]

4 million lines of code isn't too far from 500 million? Math is not your strong suit is it.

Not defending what the GP said, but in context, 4 million lines of code sounds just about as reasonable as 500 million. Have any of you visited healthcare.gov? I've personally written substantially more complex websites pulling from multiple datasources (including the backend SQL code and a pair of webservices), and I doubt I have 10k lines between them all total. And yes, that includes comments, and no, I don't write single line multi-megabyte Perl scripts.

The only serious complexity to healthcare.gov comes from getting reliable price feeds from the insurance companies - And that amounts to more of a business problem than a coding one. So when anyone comes out and tells me that PoC (no, not "proof of concept") has X million lines of code, my bullshit detector pegs the meter.

Re:So now we're trusting blogs face value?

[deniable]

They had to provide redundant copies in case a module failed.

Re:So now we're trusting blogs face value?

[Talderas]

You want to know another way that bullshit is tripped? It took about 400,000 lines of code to write the flight software for the shuttle. The Linux kernel is 15,803,499.

A website taking a quarter of the lines of code of a fucking operating system and ten times the amount for complex flight software?

Re: So now we're trusting blogs face value?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can confirm AC was one of the other 5 good CGIFederal coders on the hc.gov effort, and generally a good guy. Posted AC for obvious reasons.

Re: So now we're trusting blogs face value?

[cheesybagel]

I guess you are one of those dumb people who validate information by who's providing it rather than the actual information itself.

Re:So now we're trusting blogs face value?

[Cwix]

To be honest I am a sys admin, my coding experience is very limited. But comparing 4 to 500 million is a bit ridiculous and that's what I was trying to point out.

Re:So now we're trusting blogs face value?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well the media has no interest in digging into any of the "phony" scandals going on.

Government contracts over a certain dollar amount - $25m - by law have to follow certain monthly or more often data collection metrics that include how well they are meeting cost and schedule with explanations on risks. While many complain about the project management methods they have been shown to predict failures or at least get people discussing fixes early.

Software contracts have additional side data collection requirements mostly to support future project planning on lines of code, how much code reuse from other projects ..etc. Projects can be shutdown if you do not provide your stats - although if you are late you can push things or sometimes fudge them. No real verification but the data is probably used by many of those classic software engineering books.

The point is the data on this project is there. What can it take to release it?

Re:So now we're trusting blogs face value?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually it would be neat to compare the official numbers with the reddit post

Did it include...

[Anonymous Coward]

the parts where the "programmers" and "designers" were learning basic javascript functions and had code copied from w3schools? How were the hundreds of "TODO" lines counted? I'm sure its better now, but damn was it a disaster to look at the page source in Oct.

WOW

[technosaurus]

Over 3 million lines of bugs for what is essentially a database frontend.

Re:WOW

[thedonger]

Forget about the number of lines of code. I work for a U.S. company that builds healthcare.gov type web sites and the reporting back end for large companies. The estimated price tag of the front end ($150 million or so) is about 20 times what the tax payers should have paid. Add in the back end reporting to the insurance companies and billing, throw a call center in at least two different time zones, main and backup datacenters and instead of the full price tag ($600 mil?), let's say at the high end $20 million for the whole thing. Ongoing administration costs maybe in the 7 digits per year. The whole thing was a sham to get votes and fill the coffers of some cronies.

Re:WOW

[wonderboss]

That was exactly my reaction.

Re:WOW

[Anonymous Coward]

Over 3 million lines of bugs for what is essentially a database frontend.

This really shows your ignorance. Sure there's a whole lot of DB stuff going on, but there are many complex systems both within the government and with the providers that this system interacts with.

Re:WOW

[alen]

yeah, where everyone is in a few insurance groups and gets the same basic benefits

obamacare has variable pricing based on history, finances, where you live, etc. lots of business rules to properly price the policy

Re:WOW

[nurb432]

If they had used a good ESB instead of hard coding it, then even that portion of the code would be greatly reduced. ( and more maintainable )

Re:WOW

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at their backend database. MarkLogic, a NoSQL XML DB? NoSQL is great for a massive amount of data where integrity isn't an issue, but even though MarkLogic claims ACID compliance, they make light and say that ACID isn't really needed. However, for medical records which are almost as critical as banking records [1], using a DB that tap dances around integrity for speed is just wrong.

Realistically, the HC.gov website should have been done with a decent SQL RDBMS. Oracle comes to mind, DB/2 as well, and even though both companies have had issues, there is enough expertise to go around that a solution can be found. If neither is good, MS SQL server, and Sybase also provide scalability on the large sizes needed.

The sad thing, this whole project could have been implemented for a fraction of the cost it took had they just stuck with known good industry standards and consultants who knew what they are doing with large scale database installations. MarkLogic is great for indexing cat pictures on a social network. It is not something to be using to make sure someone gets a sulfide instead of a sulfate compound in their medicine.

[1]: No banks use NoSQL for their core transactions. Enough said.

Re:WOW

[Anonymous Coward]

No banks use NoSQL for their core transactions. Enough said.

I guess they should have used a Java Applet then. /s

Re:WOW

[CrimsonAvenger]

I thought the whole point of the ACA was that everyone got the same basic benefits?

And while it's true that calculating the subsidy is part of the job, that's not all that big a deal, really. Family size & family income are pretty much the only variables. Given those inputs, you should be able to make the calculation in a hundred lines of code, tops.

Re:WOW

[thedonger]

yeah, where everyone is in a few insurance groups and gets the same basic benefits

obamacare has variable pricing based on history, finances, where you live, etc. lots of business rules to properly price the policy

Actually, no. We can program a high amount of variability in pricing and eligibility based on whatever data is required. And we own a private exchange, so we do that, too. Also, we can implement such a project in 6 months, sometimes less, including the entire reporting requirement.

Re:WOW

[K. S. Kyosuke]

I still think that the system could be something like ten times smaller, easily. The vast majority of large systems is shrinkable by at least that amount when the lowest hanging accidental complexity fruit is removed. (That's usually just the beginning but half-baked projects like this one are generally not willing to go all the way along that path.)

Re:WOW

[NicBenjamin]

Over 3 million lines of bugs for what is essentially a database frontend.

That's a huge oversimplification. It's kinda like calling an Abrams Tank a bulldozer with a rifle bolted on the front.

HealthCare.gov does a lot of actual calculations itself. Once it knows your location it has to ask several other databases for your income level, at which point it compares that income level to the poverty rate. This is step one of determining your subsidy. Step 2 is to query a second database for a list of plans in your area. The second lowest cost silver plan is the "Base Plan" which is the second number used to calculate your subsidy. That's not just a database query, it's executable code.

Moreover the database front-end is probably the most complicated database front-end in actual production anywhere. It's not just querying a somewhat secure SQL database to show your friends your blog posts, it's querying multiple completely different databases, most of whom weren't designed to be compatible with each-other. It all needs damn-near-perfect security. It needs to deal with complex legal questions such as what happens when Louisiana decides some insurer has been cheating a bit on some legal requirement? Is the desired result under Louisiana law different then Ohio?

Re:WOW

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

No, that's not the point at all.
The point was to make useful insurance policies more readily availible to more amercians. Its so frustrating to hear people on the news talk about how a doctor wouldn't treat them because he didn't take "obamacare". There is no single policy that can be catagorised as "obamacare". If someone actually said that without actually looking at his policy, then that's just crazy wrong. As far as I know, providers can't really tell if a specific policy was purchased on an exchange or not.

Re:WOW

[WillAffleckUW]

Exactly. Should have just implemented Canada's Single Payer National Healthcare for 1/20th the cost.

The resulting health improvement in the US would have saved Trillions that we could have wasted in IraqIranAfghaniPakistan.

Re:WOW

[ArcherB]

Exactly. Should have just implemented Canada's Single Payer National Healthcare for 1/20th the cost.

The resulting health improvement in the US would have saved Trillions that we could have wasted in IraqIranAfghaniPakistan.

First, the cost of both wars was less than $2 trillion, making the 's' on the word "Trillion" misleading and dishonest.

Next, we have a government run, single payer, health care system now. It's called VA. How's that working out?

Re:WOW

[ArcherB]

HealthCare.gov does a lot of actual calculations itself. Once it knows your location it has to ask several other databases for your income level, at which point it compares that income level to the poverty rate. This is step one of determining your subsidy. Step 2 is to query a second database for a list of plans in your area. The second lowest cost silver plan is the "Base Plan" which is the second number used to calculate your subsidy. That's not just a database query, it's executable code.
Everything you described here can be done within a database engine, making HealthCare.gov essentially a database frontend that reinvented part of the wheel.

Moreover the database front-end is probably the most complicated database front-end in actual production anywhere.
No. No it's not, or at least it doesn't need to be. I would say credit card authorization databases would be the most complicated, followed closely by the banks. There are also several customer databases that are outright huge. You have parts inventories for large companies and databases used by engineers designing various components for bridges, air liners, jet fighters, combat vehicles, electric cars, etc. Of course, let's not forget the databases used by Internet companies like Google, government agencies like the IRS, census, and the Fed, and the multitude of databases need to run our phone and communication systems. All of these systems require front-ends. The frontend my bank uses for their online banking system is more complicated than HC.gov and deals with a more complicated system of DB's on the backend.
If this is one of the most complicated database front-ends in existence, that is proof that it is designed and written by incompetents.

it's querying multiple completely different databases, most of whom weren't designed to be compatible with each-other. It all needs damn-near-perfect security. It needs to deal with complex legal questions such as what happens when Louisiana decides some insurer has been cheating a bit on some legal requirement? Is the desired result under Louisiana law different then Ohio?
So, it's the type of system you find running every bank in America, minus the need for international transactions.

(disclaimer: I've worked in Internet Banking Systems and the defense industry)

Re:WOW

[Anonymous Coward]

Next, we have a government run, single payer, health care system now. It's called VA. How's that working out?

People are lying to the people writing their paycheck to keep the next check coming, news at 10. Let me know when you come up with a way to stop that in any setting, private or public.

Aetna et al would appreciate that too, especially since doctors don't get arrested for defrauding them, they can only sue them and hope to get some money back.

Re:WOW

[WillAffleckUW]

First, the cost of both wars was less than $2 trillion, making the 's' on the word "Trillion" misleading and dishonest.

Next, we have a government run, single payer, health care system now. It's called VA. How's that working out?

You forgot to include lifetime costs for VA health care for surviving vets, who tend to have fairly difficult to treat injuries that would have killed people in prior wars.

This is why there's such a backlog in the VA.

The costs are as I state, not the low ball "cost" you've been told.

Re:WOW

[NicBenjamin]

Finance guys are so cute. They're convinced that just because it has finance on the title, and the boss spends loads of money on legal shit, everything is more legal and complicated then anything anyone else does. The problem with this post in particular is that you're conflating a bunch of different finance databases into a single database.

For example a retail bank needs two tables in it's accounts database. One for the account, a second to record the transactions. The database may be queried by other databases (ie: the guy approving loans), but it is not actually a part of those databases. If you're gonna include it in your bank-database-frontend system then you also have to include every database HealthCare.gov queries in it's complexity. That includes the entire Social Security system, and the IRS, so HealthCare.gov still kicks your ass because your entire tax form is queried by the database when it verifies your income.

You could probably convince a bunch of PHB-English Majors your database is more complicated because you have six different, totally unrelated databases in the same file, but don't try that shit in front of engineers.

BTW, this bit of your post is actually less ridiculous then your claim finance databases have to be complicated due to complying with state law. To an extent that's true, but given that the Feds have had over-arching regulation of the finance industry for decades and state laws have tended to become more uniform over the period, and they've had practical influence over health insurance for five months, it doesn't prove your legal compliance problems are more complex then HealthCarte.gov's.

Re:WOW

[Bing Tsher E]

We're talking about the implementation model of the VA, and how it ends up in actual implementation, not the details of the 'bottom line dollar value' of the VA. Shit-tons of money are spent on the VA, as should be the case for veterans who gave so much. Get a clue and pull your head outta there.

Re:WOW

[ArcherB]

Finance guys are so cute.
I was an IT guy so....

For example a retail bank needs two tables in it's accounts database. One for the account, a second to record the transactions.
The DB needs a customer table (name, address, phone, address, ect), transaction table, account type table, account table, interest rate table, payee table, payroll tables (complete with more account data from other banks, employee names, etc) etc. There's a LOT of data involved, and this still doesn't include the cutesie stuff banks throw in like customer preferences.

The database may be queried by other databases (ie: the guy approving loans), but it is not actually a part of those databases.
Actually, different systems maintain different databases. For example the Internet Banking side will maintain it's own database. the ATM side will have it's own side. Then there's the credit card system, ACH systems, wire systems, the core system itself and others. All of these systems must interact with eachother. For example, the a customer may log into the Internet banking side, which will have to hit the core to get the current balance, EOD balance from yesterday, unprocessed transactions, processed transactions, interest rates, any messages from the bank, and so on. It also has to be able to inject transactions such as payroll into the core system, wires into the wire system and so on.
Of course, all of these systems are different. The ACH system uses a flat text file. The core is usually an UNIX based system with a terminal interface. The Internet Banking is probably an Apache Tomcat connecting to a MSSQL system. Then, there is the bank end that is comprised of DB front-ends, screen scrapers, batch files, transaction injectors and so on.

You could probably convince a bunch of PHB-English Majors your database is more complicated because you have six different, totally unrelated databases in the same file, but don't try that shit in front of engineers.
Not just different DB's but completely different architectures. And, of course, different states have different laws. For example, all states that take income taxes have a different method to pay them. Then their are business taxes, both federal and for all 50 states, loan laws, interest rate laws etc.

And there is much much more, but this is getting out of hand. Suffice to say that you have no friggin' clue as to what you are talking about when it comes to everything a bank does, much less when it comes to tying all those systems together.

Compare that to the ACA system which involves user data, finance data, what companies are available per state, what plans available per company, and an interface system to communicate between the handful of ACA authorized insurance companies per state and the back-office system. Many states run their own system. The government has claimed that their system doesn't even keep the data!

Re:WOW

[Zordak]

Its so frustrating to hear people on the news talk about how a doctor wouldn't treat them because he didn't take "obamacare".

What that guy probably means is that he bought a policy on the Obamacare exchange, and his doctor wouldn't see him because he doesn't accept that policy.

Re:WOW

[trawg]

What that guy probably means is that he bought a policy on the Obamacare exchange, and his doctor wouldn't see him because he doesn't accept that policy.

But that can happen anyway, right? Presumably doctors change what insurance they accept at certain times depending on what market conditions exist and how they go with the various insurance companies they have to deal with?

Re:WOW

[ShakaUVM]

>. Its so frustrating to hear people on the news talk about how a doctor wouldn't treat them because he didn't take "obamacare". There is no single policy that can be catagorised as "obamacare"

You're probably misunderstanding what is said, or the reporters are saying it wrong. The ACA cut $200B from Medicare/Medicaid reimbursements, and some doctors stopped accepting such patients when they did the math and found it would cause them to take a loss, or not be worth their time.

Re:WOW

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. Should have just implemented Canada's Single Payer National Healthcare for 1/20th the cost.

Thank god we adopted national healthcare in 1961. I can't even fathom paying upwards of $100 a month for health insurance, or having to pay a doctor's bill. Thank fucking god.

Re:WOW

[Anonymous Coward]

Finance guys are so cute.

Since you conceded, I stopped reading there.

Re:WOW

[ArcherB]

You forgot to include lifetime costs for VA health care for surviving vets, who tend to have fairly difficult to treat injuries that would have killed people in prior wars.

This is why there's such a backlog in the VA.

No it's not. The majority of the people at the VA are mostly Vietnam vets with a few WWII and Korean War vets hanging on. Most of your Iraq/Afghanistan vets are under the age of 50, meaning they have their own health insurance through the company they work for. For example, ME! I've never been to a VA hospital. Never had to. I always had my own insurance.

As for the total cost, right now, it ranks at about $1.5 trillion for 14 years. Since the expensive part of launching million dollar missiles to blow up a $100 tent and fueling tanks that get gallons to the mile are over, the rate at which the cost is increasing is slowing substantially. It is unlikely that it will reach $2 trillion.

Either way, you said "wastED", meaning past tense. We haven't spent $2 trillion and won't for many years, if ever.

Re:WOW

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

No, it was the individual with the coverage that said that exact same phrase "they said they didn't take obamacare". This was Texas, so I wouldn't be surprised if there was plenty of ignorance to go around. But it wasn't my mistake, nor any reporters.

I'm somewhat well informed on this issue as most of my family members are in various parts of healthcare doctor, nurse, drug makers, hospital administration, insurance. My guess would be that either the doctor was an idoit ( entirely possible) or the patient is an idiot ( also possible). But, there is no single obama care plan, nor are the same plans with in a category ( bronze, silver, gold) even similar enough to make a determination of coverage possible.

Re:WOW

[Anne Thwacks]

and consultants who knew what they are doing

You know nothing about databases, or the value of pork, do you?

Re:WOW

[Anonymous Coward]

At the end of the day, what you're actually saying is that making a model database of a convoluted system dominated by arbitrary policy is a ridiculously difficult proposition.

In addition to the banking example given above, I refer you to time zones.

Re:WOW

[RobSwider]

Not to mention the provider data. Which doctors are part of which networks during a given date-of-service. Are they billing under their own account or the hospital they occasionally work out of. And the fact that there is no absolute identifier on anything. SSN? Can't use it. Insurance company identifier? Well, that doctor had the OLD id on file. That claim has the same identifier on it? Is it a REsubmission or a duplicate? And you would be amazed at how many parents don't know their kids' birthdays. And don't get me started on the HIPAA "standard" EDI documents, where the segment definitions can mostly be boiled down to "Optional: If not needed, don't send." I'll be in the bathroom, hitting my head against the tile floor.

Re:WOW

[NicBenjamin]

Finance guys are so cute.
I was an IT guy so....

Doesn't matter.

The arrogance permeates the culture. And your post is actually a pretty good example.

The question we're arguing is "Is HealthCare.gov the most complicated database front end ever made?"

For example a retail bank needs two tables in it's accounts database. One for the account, a second to record the transactions.
The DB needs a customer table (name, address, phone, address, ect), transaction table, account type table, account table, interest rate table, payee table, payroll tables (complete with more account data from other banks, employee names, etc) etc. There's a LOT of data involved, and this still doesn't include the cutesie stuff banks throw in like customer preferences.

So you have six tables. That's a somewhat complicated database, which makes the front end moderately complicated. The actual amount of data in the databases is totally irrelevant, and the fact you're even bringing it up suggests that you're too arrogant to actually read the post your responding to.

Moreover how many tables do you think HealthCare.gov has? It has to have at least a table of Zip Codes, insurers, plans offered by the insurers, and income cut-offs. Then it needs to access other databases (primarily Social Security, but also the IRS). Additionally it has to have a table or two to handle user accounts whose data hasn't been sent off to an insurer yet.

Which means HealthCare.gov has as many tables internally as your databases do, and it's front-end has to be able to communicate with quite a few other databases whose contents make yours look like a shopping list.

The database may be queried by other databases (ie: the guy approving loans), but it is not actually a part of those databases.
Actually, different systems maintain different databases. For example the Internet Banking side will maintain it's own database. the ATM side will have it's own side. Then there's the credit card system, ACH systems, wire systems, the core system itself and others. All of these systems must interact with eachother. For example, the a customer may log into the Internet banking side, which will have to hit the core to get the current balance, EOD balance from yesterday, unprocessed transactions, processed transactions, interest rates, any messages from the bank, and so on. It also has to be able to inject transactions such as payroll into the core system, wires into the wire system and so on.
Of course, all of these systems are different. The ACH system uses a flat text file. The core is usually an UNIX based system with a terminal interface. The Internet Banking is probably an Apache Tomcat connecting to a MSSQL system. Then, there is the bank end that is comprised of DB front-ends, screen scrapers, batch files, transaction injectors and so on.

You could probably convince a bunch of PHB-English Majors your database is more complicated because you have six different, totally unrelated databases in the same file, but don't try that shit in front of engineers.
Not just different DB's but completely different architectures. And, of course, different states have different laws. For example, all states that take income taxes have a different method to pay them. Then their are business taxes, both federal and for all 50 states, loan laws, interest rate laws etc.

And there is much much more, but this is getting out of hand. Suffice to say that you have no friggin' clue as to what you are talking about when it comes to everything a bank does, much less when it comes to tying all those systems together.

Compare that to the ACA system which involves user data, finance data, what companies are available per state, what plans available per company, and an interface system to communicate between the handful of ACA authorized insurance companies per state and the back-office system. Many states

I doubt any developers believed that

[Anonymous Coward]

It was a number some talking head pulled out of their butt to whine about bloated government project X to the ignorant public.

47449 lines of Maven (pom.xml)

[Tailhook]

Hmm.

Could we, perhaps, use some of the techniques that people have speculated about for deflecting space rocks and, instead, guide one into Earth deliberately?

Even 10MLocs would be outrageous

[Anonymous Coward]

Me and my 120 developer colleagues are able to make software for 40 hospitals, covering about every bit of information you can imagine, in less than 10 MLocs (I counted 4.7 real code MLocs four years ago, might be 10+ now because of migration to other language/environment and new features). 500M for a website isn't possible. Period.

Re:Even 10MLocs would be outrageous

[Anonymous Coward]

>500M for a website isn't possible. Period.
It is when you use PHP and / or Java.

Re:Even 10MLocs would be outrageous

[Lodragandraoidh]

500M for a website isn't possible. Period.

Anything is possible. The real question: is it probable?

Why So Many Programming and Scripting Languages?

[Anonymous Coward]

Language files blank comment code
Java 13481 419643 847982 2399683
HTML 1635 50124 16845 515494
Javascript 1631 56298 102140 322192
XSD 5227 1238 20945 156696
XML 659 6436 13073 136827
CSS 205 14000 9420 109815
Maven 275 737 1421 47449
XSLT 383 2357 1476 21624
Bourne Shell 248 2305 1446 8830
SQL 28 860 139 8487
JavaServer Faces 35 766 0 3770
DOS Batch 48 235 118 849
Ant 8 77 45 810
Perl 18 161 45 646
Visualforce Component 39 0 0 626
Groovy 4 68 15 361
Python 5 55 90 263
Visual Basic 1 3 0 25
DTD 1 8 0 17
JSP 3 0 0 13
ASP.Net 1 0 0 11
SUM 23935 555371 1015200 3734488

Holy Christopher Columbus! Was it bring your favourite programming language to work month?

$1.2B/3.7m =

[h8sg8s]

Approaching $325 per line of code. Great work if you can get it. Wonder what it would have looked like had it been outsourced to some high-volume web service like Google or FB?

Re:$1.2B/3.7m =

[NicBenjamin]

Where do you get $1.2 Billion?

As of December it was $319 million or so. And that includes a lot of non-technical stuff.

Re:$1.2B/3.7m =

[NicBenjamin]

Goddamn I thought I typed that link right. But this is the source for $319 million:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Re:$1.2B/3.7m =

[h8sg8s]

http://about.bgov.com/2013-10-...

I added the customary Obamacare cost overruns to round it out to $1.2B

Why should I believe this information?

[sbrown123]

Seriously. This account was created just to post some numbers and we are suppose to take them as fact? Hell, I could create an account on Reddit and come up with a totally different set of numbers and you can take my comment as fact too.

Re:Why should I believe this information?

[NicBenjamin]

Because it looks right and the only other possible estimate we have (500 million) is clearly ridiculous BS an idiot made up as a sound-byte.

As an engineer that's probably not enough certainty for you to believe it, but public policy isn't engineering. Most decisions have to be based on incomplete information, (generally half-remembered overheard BS), so you kinda have to go with the Least Stupid Guess option.

Re:Why should I believe this information?

[glwtta]

No one expects you to take anything as fact.

Those numbers do, on the other hand, sound plausible for a project of that type and size. Including the breakdown between different languages.

Whereas the 500m number is absurd on its face. You're not expected to take away more than that.

Re:Why should I believe this information?

[Bing Tsher E]

Public policy is social engineering. Yes, I mean that in the Mitnick sense.

No, not in the 'Mitnick sense' of a 2600 subscriber. I meant as in 'fucking crooks.'

Re:Why should I believe this information?

[NicBenjamin]

To an extent that's true.

But even no public policy is de facto a public policy that the last set of crooks should keep all their ill-gotten gains, and if they did their crookedness right they will also have the opportunity to increase their gains.

The problem analytic folks have is that the worlds problems are generally people. And those people aren't gonna look at your beautifully-crafted piece of logic proving their Social Security needs to be cut and say "Well that makes sense, I guess I won't be taking my grandson to Disney World anytime soon." Since most taxpayers think they're taxed enough to solve the problem we either have to engage in a bunch of political BS backscratching/half-truths/lies or just sit on our asses as the trust fund's expiration date approaches.

Re:Why should I believe this information?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ya there the numbers seem a little odd two, 8487 SQL lines seems a bit low relative to the overall application size/scope.

Re:Why So Many Programming and Scripting Languages

[halfEvilTech]

at least there was no COBOL.

because COBOL is the devil and it raises taxes

Re:I can Replace it with ONE Line of Code!

[T.E.D.]

MSGBOX( "Fuck You, America" )

This must be the much-vaunted "replace" portion of the Republican "Repeal and Replace" slogan.

Count faster

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

I don't see how they could have reported 500 million lines of code in the first place. The Congressional authorization to spend $30 million to study the best way to count lines isn't even out of the House committee yet.

Re:Count faster

[jeffmflanagan]

+ 1 Funny to anyone who's worked with ANY large organization, and here I am out of mod points. Sorry Impy.

2.4M Lines of Java?

[hondo77]

To be fair, most of that is probably getters and setters.

Re:2.4M Lines of Java?

[Anonymous Coward]

That and error handling, because, you know, Java is so amazing at avoiding catastrophes.

Re:2.4M Lines of Java?

[Anonymous Coward]

And 10000 of those files are exception classes

OS X

[jones_supa]

The ITWorld article also claims that OS X Tiger had 86 million lines of code (they are referencing to an Engadget article). However, that's hard to believe. Has that number actually been 8.6 million, for example?

Re: Libtards

[Anonymous Coward]

I am sorry guys for my previous posting. I just had a stroke, my brain was not functioning and apparently I just passed out on the keyboard. Bummer.

We all knew that!

[Anonymous Coward]

Obama, the most intelligent President that US had sat down one day and whipped up the whole thing in 22 lines of Perl.....

Re:We all knew that!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a shame he has sealed all of his college records so there is no way to prove these "intelligent" claims. So for now, we just have to go by how well he can read a teleprompter.

Re:We all knew that!

[Anonymous Coward]

Its a shame the Romney refused to disclose his income taxes. You know the tradition started by Romney's father when he ran for president?

Re: We all knew that!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hating on Romney? Your President of the People turned out to be a lying, incompetent elitist. Butthurt much?

We all knew that!

[Anonymous Coward]

Obama, the most intelligent President that US had sat down one day and whipped up the whole thing in 22 lines of Perl.....

Impossible. Obama is a lawyer and lawyers never limit themselves to merely 22 lines...not even on a Commodore VIC-20 with 22 columns and 23 lines of video display.

Amazing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sweet.

Related Tangent - Accenture

[dave562]

Is Accenture still in the running to redo the web site? I am curious to see how they do with it, given the way they handled London Stock Exchange revamp a while ago.

Perl

[Princeofcups]

So 18 perl scripts to run the entire site. Sounds about right. What's the rest of that code for?

Re:Why So Many Programming and Scripting Languages

[PPH]

I didn't see Brainfuck. Or Malbolge.

Bloat

[Anonymous Coward]

Best be succinct and clera: it is easier to find flaws.

Re:Why So Many Programming and Scripting Languages

[Zordak]

Holy Christopher Columbus! Was it bring your favourite programming language to work month?

Don't worry. The Obama administration has issued an executive order instructing the new vendor to port the system entirely to INTERCAL.

Re: Libtards

[Anonymous Coward]

-Slashdot has the Anonymous Coward feature which means libtards can show their real racist tendencies.

Says the Anonymous Coward... how ironic, you faggot fucking white trash honky.

I found the problem

[tomhath]

Java 13481 419643 847982 2399683

SQL 28 860 139 8487

Trying to build a big web site like that with Hibernate. They had no chance.

Who Needs Lines Today ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Stream it Dumb Fuckers !

Ha ha

Re: Why So Many Programming and Scripting Language

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean INTERRACIAL

Re:Why So Many Programming and Scripting Languages

[eulernet]

Was it bring your favourite programming language to work month?

SUM

How about a meaningful comparison?

[Required Snark]

Comparing a web site to an OS is crazy. Why is anyone taking this seriously?

At a minimum, you would need to compare HealthCare.gov to another web site that had similar requirements. It would have to be nationwide and be HIPPA compliant. For example, AMAZON or EBAY would not count, because they don't have any of the legal requirements that a heath provider has.

It is obvious that this bogus number is just another politically motivated smear against the ACA (Obamacare). Everyone here is quibbling about LOC, while the real issue is that people are engaged in propaganda and wild lies because they oppose a government program.

Something must be wrong with me. I keep making the mistake that those who post on Slashdot are somehow more intelligent then the average population. When you fixate on minute technical details rather then the larger issues you are not smart, you are dumb.

Re:How about a meaningful comparison?

[roc97007]

Whelp, we know who you voted for...

For comparison ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Our weather forecasting system is 3.5 million lines of Fortran, augmented by around 20,000 lines of C.

Must be a typo

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty sure they meant it took 500 million lines of coke to implement the site. After all there were multiple government agencies and big important corporations involved. How else would the hookers stay interested?

Re:Why So Many Programming and Scripting Languages

[cdrudge]

Was it bring your favourite programming language to work month?

No. HTML, XSD, XML, CSS, and DTD aren't even programming languages. JavaScript, while a language, I'll lump in with the HTML as it's probably not running server side and pretty much is the only option for client side scripting.

Java dominates the line count for what's left. Maven is primarily for build automation for Java so it's more of a compliment to Java than another language just because they can. Similar goes for Groovy and JavaServer Faces being more companions to Java. Ant also is for build automation. Visualforce Component is for integrating with Salesforce.

Who knows what they use bsh, dos batch, python, jsp, asp.net, and VB for, but they are such low line counts it can't be much. My guess is that it was just the easiest path to do something on a particular system with some constraint that dictated some other already used language couldn't be used. Why write a java program to write a shell script that copies a file from one directory to another. Or a variety of other mundane things where the overhead isn't worth it.

Re:Why So Many Programming and Scripting Languages

[Lodragandraoidh]

Holy Christopher Columbus! Was it bring your favourite programming language to work month?

Seriously, this is a clear indication to me that this thing probably had all the halmarks of bad projects:

1. Design by committee - definitely little thought given to KISS. No unifying approach/structure.

1. No central control of the implementation standards.

1. No thought of manageability/longevity/lifecycle of the code base - expediency at the expense of resiliency.

Managing that brittle monstrosity is going to be painful over the long haul. I feel for whoever gets that job.

The questions for those of us in the business: Why do we continue the cycle of poor craftsmanship/performance? What can we do about it?

But seriously...

[roc97007]

I strongly suspect that the "500 million lines of code" was someone working backwards from the cost. They looked at the reported dollar amount and went "ye gods! if we admit we paid that much for 20K lines of code we'll never hold office again."

You know what's hilarious?

[roc97007]

Every time I see another (or repeated...) article about healthcare.gov, I'm reminded that a common final assignment for a second year Active Server Pages class is to code a website to offer a list of services for sale.

"If it were easy, everyone would be doing it". Oh, wait... everyone is.