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America's Cities Are Running on Software From the '80s (bloomberg.com)
Even San Francisco's tech chops can't save it from relying on computers that belong in a museum. From a report: The only place in San Francisco still pricing real estate like it's the 1980s is the city assessor's office. Its property tax system dates back to the dawn of the floppy disk. City employees appraising the market work with software that runs on a dead programming language and can't be used with a mouse. Assessors are prone to make mistakes when using the vintage software because it can't display all the basic information for a given property on one screen. The staffers have to open and exit several menus to input stuff as simple as addresses. To put it mildly, the setup "doesn't reflect business needs now," says the city's assessor, Carmen Chu.
San Francisco rarely conjures images of creaky, decades-old technology, but that's what's running a key swath of its government, as well as those of cities across the U.S. Politicians can often score relatively easy wins with constituents by borrowing money to pay for new roads and bridges, but the digital equivalents of such infrastructure projects generally don't draw the same enthusiasm. "Modernizing technology is not a top issue that typically comes to mind when you talk to taxpayers and constituents on the street," Chu says. It took her office almost four years to secure $36 million for updated assessors' hardware and software that can, among other things, give priority to cases in which delays may prove costly. The design requirements are due to be finalized this summer.
San Francisco rarely conjures images of creaky, decades-old technology, but that's what's running a key swath of its government, as well as those of cities across the U.S. Politicians can often score relatively easy wins with constituents by borrowing money to pay for new roads and bridges, but the digital equivalents of such infrastructure projects generally don't draw the same enthusiasm. "Modernizing technology is not a top issue that typically comes to mind when you talk to taxpayers and constituents on the street," Chu says. It took her office almost four years to secure $36 million for updated assessors' hardware and software that can, among other things, give priority to cases in which delays may prove costly. The design requirements are due to be finalized this summer.
It's Java, right? Tell me it's Java!
moguls, not you plebs. Really though, writing a front end that dumps to the backend functions of whatever language they are using should be no trouble at all. If the computers are not dumb terminals, then any computer since the mid 1990s should be high enough resolution when switched to either higher res text mode or graphics mode to handle all the major input on a single screen. This isn't rocket science and sounds more like institutional incompetence.
You can read the headline as a denigration of governments (which is always valid, because they get paid regardless of their performance), but you can also read it as proving that the programmers of the 1980s produces some pretty solid work.
would be 1971. I wonder if these computers and related stuff could be sold to vintage nerds like Curious Marc for example?
...and is optimized to run on extremely slow hardware. It was often written by people that were extremely talented at optimizing their code because hardware limitations forced them to do this.
I won't deny that advances in computer language have made it possible to write programs better than they used to be written when machines were extremely procedural and single threaded, but at the same time, the amount of bloat in modern programming afforded by modern hardware has more than made up for it.
I've seen the progression of software for simple things like workorder systems and asset management and audit get worse over time. The only 'improvement' is access, in that going from an 80x25 text console on a remote system with terminal emulation, to a a full-fledged program running on a specific architecture in a text mode, to a GUI program on a specific architecture, to 'applet' type programs using runtime libraries cross-platform, to web-based access that theoretically are entirely platform independent presuming a minimum browser version, and in just about all cases the further they've gone, the slower clunkier for actual experienced users that frequently use the system. It might not be any better for inexperienced users either if the vendor hasn't taken the time to look at workflow from an outside point of view.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Think of it, 1980's stuff didn't get hooked up to the Internet like stuff is today. Nobody can worm their way in easy over an Internet connection to mess around with the systems.
I think this is awesome. It was good software that hasn't needed to be "updated" every other day like modern software is.
I don't respond to AC's.
This is because they budget for the acquisition of the equipment and software but somehow it never occurs to anyone to budget for future improvements and upgrades to keep the technology modern on an ongoing basis. So they end up with systems that work as originally designed but fail to keep pace with improvement in technology. There are a lot of these sorts of systems in the military. The military to this day still uses 8" floppy disks which have been obsolete technology for 40 years. My car is a pickup truck but my state's outdated registration system lists it as a station wagon because it relies on old and hard to fix technology and that was the best it could do.
Now you'll hear some idiots saying "ain't broke don't fix it" which is is a poor argument for technology that clearly so far behind the state of the art. While it might still do its original task as designed, it no longer does so efficiently nor can it take advantage of improvements in the state of the art. It also ends up depending on hardware that often cannot be easily replaced should it fail. It also becomes hard/expensive to train people to use/fix/maintain it. Databases (and the people depending on them) routinely benefit from being able to efficiently talk to one another and systems that haven't been updated in 30 years tend to be remarkably bad at doing this.
California and HP have collaborated to keep the shit show at the DMV ongoing for years. Outages abound. Probably a good 20% of the time I go to the DMV, they're having some kind of outage. And then there's the training issue — the system is antiquated, and has to be massaged just so to get it to work, so a huge amount of training is required and employees clearly aren't getting it. The system is actually from the sixties, as I understand it. The ID system has been modernized, but vehicle registration is still grossly antiquated.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
But old isn't cool. That's manifested in buggy whips, ageism and death panels.
While San Francisco is a big city, that just feels like a big number to me. I imagine the assessor's office has a huge database to deal with, but there's still a finite number of employee users and whatever outward facing public interface. And while every city wants to think they are unique, it's also hard to imagine their ultimate needs are radically different than Chicago, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Phoenix or any other random big city. So I guess the number is big if they start wanting a completely bespoke system, unlike any other system in the country used by a city with the same needs. They pay a group of consultants to spend time and money telling them that what they need isn't an off-the-shelf solution that's faster and cheaper to deploy, but something tailored to their specific set of requirements. And because they go through this every single time they ponder upgrading they shy away from it, pushing it back and making the next upgrade task that much larger. Government efficiency as usual.
Try affording a license on a local government budget.
I'm just surprised there's no one calling for open-source since that's everyone's poster child for success for everything else ("the internet runs on...") Guess just like "year of the desktop" open-source can't crack government either.
'can't be used with a mouse'
Which describes an entire era of software. Was ti useful before a mouse was considered so vital, actually before it was even used, or existed? Well, back then it was specified, purchased, and used. Same as now, this is a specious argument.
'Assessors are prone to make mistakes when using the vintage software because it can't display all the basic information for a given property on one screen'
Dear, it seems as if either this software was NEVER usable, or are users able to take the necessary care to do their work accurately...?
'The staffers have to open and exit several menus to input stuff as simple as addresses'
Ah, the slings and arrows.
'To put it mildly, the setup "doesn't reflect business needs now'
As in ease of use, etc, sure. As in it has always worked like this, why do I seem to read this as 'it's old and clunky, and it's the fault of the software that I make so many mistakes'. Where I work, we do have a lot of this. Because we care, and work in private industry, we understand the software, make the necessary adjustments to our habits, and take the time to do it right.
'It took her office almost four years to secure $36 million for updated assessors' hardware and software...'
'The design requirements are due to be finalized this summer.'
What comes first, the chicken, the egg, the funding, or the requirements?
After all that, has no one in San Francisco government made a CBA case for replacing it? I'm betting they are leaving revenue on the table by not having accurate data. And I'm betting they need to build reasonable, achievable requirements. So many government IT projects fail because the project was designed so poorly from the start.. Examples abound.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
A mouse would not increase efficiencies, look at the horrid inefficiencies of web applications. The lost productivity when IBM forced one of their large financial clients to move from a 3270 green screen app for change management to web app caused outrage. Most UI/UX people do not use the tools they design. Is there "technical debt" here, likely. Does the new app need to support a mouse or be web based? Likely not.
The only reason for San Francisco to upgrade is if they want to be like Atlanta and get to try out some ransomware code on their production systems
That will be new old standard.
"We’re dealing with an irrational public who wants greater and greater service delivery at the same time they want their taxes to be lower." That's not irrational. That's optimistic. Improved service should decrease costs. If the cost of improved traffic management is less than the savings of improved road maintenance than the solution works. City planners work on long term solutions with tech that likely won't change for decades. Saying something was made in the 80s makes it sound old, but doesn't mean it is obsolete.
This kind of project screams career-ending budget overruns, graft, missed deadlines, etc. And when it's finally "done", the system fails to work in just one way that everyone notices. Paychecks aren't direct deposited. Vacation hours screwed up. Tax figures are off by a decimal point. Cron jobs fail when some SQL job fails due to some unexpected character in someone's newly created name.
All of the above costs directors/managers in public positions their comfy jobs (which they earned through years of unenviable ass-kissing and other less-than-ideal methods of power gathering) when they fail to deliver.
So when the question of replacing the rickety fossil of a system, they say, "Does it still work? Yes? Ok - then keep using it."
The next thing you know, those directors that put it off have finally retired and are sitting on that pension they waited for, the mess is passed off to the next aspiring director, who asks, "Does is still work? Oh good - I thought you said it broke..." Rinse, wash, repeat... In the meantime, the cost of the replacement has gone up exponentially, making it even easier to kick down the road.
Something has to go REALLY wrong for a change to be forced on these public entities - and the sorry director that didn't get a chair when the music stopped playing starts their death march towards an "early retirement".
Just because something has been in use for a long time doesn't mean it is in any way good.
If you can extract the existing data and use it with a "newer" application, it may be a good thing.
There should be some oversight concerning software purchasing/provisioning for a civil purposes.
There isn't a real reason to have multiple municipalities using different software packages for the same purposes. This seems like a valid reason for state wide single sourcing.
Most of what I saw in that article was how people were so inconvenienced by the screens. That and the reporter's Thrill-of-the-New. (Shit man, got to get these increased tax bills in the mail ASAP! Wish I had a bigger screen.) Software would be upgraded as it sometimes should be except for the relentless empirical evidence of insane cost over runs because most of these projects are out of control almost from the get go. Atomic mission creep.
This vendor sees a chance to get some fat municipal wallets under a decades-long contract. That pol sees his golden path to power for a job well done. This coder has his own crazy ideas about memory use. This angry grunt in the bowels of City Hall doesn't give a f**k about anything but they can't be fired without a conviction by the State Supreme Court. It's all just an example of how ridiculous it is to let tax-addicted power structures attempt any project of size where "objective needs assessment" equals a tabula rasa for them and their associates.
Finance, Cities, Airlines, Pharma, the whole defense industry. What kind of news article is this for a software developer biased news aggregation portal when even this most basic fact is stated as some kind of surprise.
There really are not freely available upgrade from Krypton anymore.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
No wonder our cities are such disasters. It's deliberate!
To use no mouse.... such a human rights violation.
... Minnesota spent about a decade and $100 million to replace its ancient vehicle-licensing and registration software, but the new version arrived with so many glitches in 2017 that Governor Tim Walz has asked for an additional $16 million to fix it. ...
Must have bought the same software that my state purchased. For over a decade they collected a "modernization" fee while using the old system of IBM 3270 terminals, and when they hired the company to develop the new system it was a colossal failure. Wait times went up significantly. Years later and the system still hasn't improved. Oh, and they still keep collecting that modernization fee. The only improvement is that you can now reserve a spot in line via a text message and they will then send you a text message when you're near the front of the queue, so you can go to work or whatever and don't have to sit in the waiting room for hours.
I pay the "convenience" fee to handle as much as I can on-line and via mail, but some times that can't be done such as when purchasing a vehicle.
I bought a utility trailer a while back. They had to fill out my name and address on no less than four different pieces of paper. Seriously? Even if they need to use paper for some strange reason, they can't just type it in once and print out the four different forms they need?
If they substitute PCs with terminal emulation software - and a serial line or other old-school connection for actual terminals, those PCs may be connected to the internet.
Theoretically, if you want to get to the ancient mainframe, get into that PC first springboard to the mainframe.
Also, many of those ancient computers have dialup modems used for remote maintenance from the vendor. If you can get in that way....
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
"Cobol-based system called AS-400"
Really? While the software they are using may be written in COBOL, the AS-400 is most certainly not based on COBOL.
And what was the AS-400 is currently still in development as the IBM I-Series server - my workplace just finished upgrading to a brand new system.
If anything the AS-400/I-Series is more RPG based than COBOL...
It's the cost of re-discovering all of the business logic hidden in 30+ years of cobol.
Replacing a system is 80% figuring out what the existing system does including the thousands of corner cases plus specifying it out and 20% actual implementation.
State, document and solve the business problem first
Apply technology later
Ford would not buy a robot first because it's 'useful and can help us do better work' and then much later determine how and where to use it in the auto manufacturing process.
Software solutions should not follow that path of tech first then business.
If you can find QWERTY on a keyboard, you're not working for the City. As we all know, there is plenty of work in the private sector, what with all the tech startups and such. So the reality is the opposite of what everybody thinks and the article suggest. Replace "Even San Francisco's tech chops" with "Especially..."
Leave it that way. Likely not directly connected to the Internet so it's secure. Or, if it is, not running anything that anyone remembers how to hack or are targeting these days.
I don't know what my software version/revision is -- it updates automatically every night between 2-6am -- but I'm running on hardware from the 60s -- walking too.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I'm still using Lotus 123 -- and WordPro (still a better editor than Word). I have it installed, and they work fine, on both my Windows 7 and 10 systems. I use them for old docs and my current financial/budget spreadsheet. Now, I do *also* have Word 2010 and LibreOffice 6.1.5.2 installed, but have been too lazy to migrate my Lotus docs to the newer applications.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
The design requirements are due to be finalized this summer.
I can almost guarantee the project will be years over schedule and billions over budget because, no, the design requirements were not actually "finalized" and city managers with enough clout constantly interrupt development with additional feature requests.
if you wait to long you get trapped by technology.
The big problem here is while the data on these systems is trivial today the pushed the limits of 8-16k miniframes. Thus there were a lot of sneaky calls directly accessing memory or even processor registers. The software was integrated into the hardware with bits of assembly and what not. This makes it pretty much impossible for a young modern programer to figure out. The old ones are dead or want $500/hr to touch a COBOL system. and lets face it the guys that bid on gov contracts wont hire them anyway. So these systems become black boxes... they still work but no one knows how.
There is a local business here that until being bought out still depended on an 80's wang system running software built for a 70's wang system. There only source of parts was trading with the air force and they only used theirs to train people to what tech may be hooked up to old soviet bloc weapon systems.
I will say no more. Vendor lock in for perpetuity.
Unless you have $10-20 million to blow on the roll of a dice.
BlameBillCosby.com
I never will understand this obsessive need to try and kill systems that just work.
AS/400 based system are some of the most reliable systems money can buy. They can handle insane amounts of workloads and can scale from small systems to complete mainframes. The only real issue with them is terminals (which is a minor issue with modern terminal emulation) and the hardware and software maintenance costs, but you do get what you pay for.
I'll almost guarantee that they will switch to some "modern" system running either a Java or Web based backend that will either get hacked, crash due to excessive load, or both, and probably pay twice as much as they're currently paying now to switch vs upgrading their current setup.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
"but the digital equivalents of such infrastructure projects generally don't draw the same enthusiasm. " -- it's not difficult to see why. Stories abound of government software upgrade attempts that turn into overpriced fiascos. (I was personally involved with one, where a utility was royally screwed over by a certain unnamed vendor.)
Government agencies don't appear to understand how to manage the process, and vendors tend to take advantage of that. The budget tends to bleed out to the tune of five or ten times the realistic cost of solving the problem, and the resulting product tends to be no more usable than what it replaced. The only difference being, the new product will be covered by an overpriced service contract.
These cases tend to be great examples of "you don't get what you pay for".
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Except for issues of time like Y2K, and Unix 2038. Never mind the other time bomb in NTP.
And this matters why, exactly?
Because requirements change with society. Because other software changes. Because machines improve and can do a better job. Because software has advanced a LOT in the last 30 years. Because computer hardware has improved a LOT in the last 30 years. Because the design of the original system was based in the limitations of the hardware of the day and a lot of compromises were made that hurt efficiency. Because it's expensive to maintain legacy systems. Because if it fails it might be really hard to restore. Because worker efficiency and morale can be improved. Because it serves the customers/taxpayers better. The list goes on and on. Just because something works as designed doesn't mean that design remains relevant or sufficiently capable. A Model T can still be driven on today's roads but I don't think you'd want one as a daily driver.
Are they using bits of leather and bird wings dipped in soot? The term "pickup truck" predates computers.
One might be forgiven for wondering that. No, they have a shitty computer system which barely works but there is no budget provided by our legislature to update. Just guessing but the original software designers probably programmed in a limited number of types of vehicles and the cost to update the system or all the records is prohibitive. Think of it as sort of a Y2K style problem that never got resolved so people figured out workarounds out of necessity.
If it fulfils the requirements the state of the art can go fuck itself.
I'm not saying upgrade for no reason. My company has several industrial presses we use daily which are older than I am and they work great. They're not state of the art but they do the job and their efficiency isn't too far down the performance curve. But they are the exception that proves the rule. Computer systems have advanced dramatically in the last 30 years. Presses not so much. It's a VERY rare piece of software that wouldn't benefit from some of the last 40 years of software development.
It's COBOL. Running on an AS/400. Big effin' deal. I'm guessing that the county assessor's opinion of computer technology is "If I haven't used it, it's got to go." [1] COBOL is not exactly dead, but it isn't the programming language du jour. (I've seen recent job ads looking for people with COBOL experience. I could forward some of them to her.) I suspect she'd much happier if the whole system consisted of a single, shared Excel spreadsheet. At least she'd have her mouse to move around.
I predict we'll be seeing a future post about the huge cost overruns, inoperable software, and the crisis in the assessor's office when the conversion to a trendy "non-dead" language on new, overpriced hardware flounders and the lawsuits begin.
[1] - She seems like she might be a kindred spirit with the guy I once worked with whose title of "Director of Computing Technology" would never have prepared you for his daily criticism of each and every computer technology he came in contact with. It was really quite amazing. Nobody--and I mean nobody--in the department could figure out what technology would be graced with his approval.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
It just appears to us as we've all experienced software from the 1990s a time when software was _really_ bad.
That lasts for decades? Not something you see much anymore. There isn't much business incentive to write robust quality software.
No, instead we get fad programming based on latest dev trends.
I've worked with tax systems on IBM iSeries a lot and know very little cobol. When a need arose for a modern UI for various processes, we interfaced with the iseries via various DB2 C# libraries without issue and treated it essentially as a database. There was nothing as stable at that system.
Java programmers with experience from the 1980s.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Yep! I think this has generally been the case with most of the business Financial software packages out on the market, even though they're "boxed" software and not custom written.
With few exceptions, they seem to usually have their roots in MS-DOS or Unix -- but were converted into a Windows app for the sake of the GUI (and often sold to another company before that changeover took place).
Microsoft Great Plains ERP would be a great example. It's gone through at least 4 or 5 major revisions since Microsoft took it over and "Window-ized" it. And yet, it still feels like a huge kludge of SQL database tables and indexes it manipulates in often odd ways. Behaves oddly on a network, in the sense it still seems to pretty much require a low latency wired Ethernet connection between clients and the server. (Performance drops off a cliff if you connect over a VPN tunnel to the server from your client, no matter how fast a broadband connection you have.) Extremely oddball "DYNAMICS.SET" configuration file their client uses too, which seems to still require manual editing to add custom dictionaries or reports to be loaded at runtime. And if you add an entry to it in an order it doesn't like, it will often modify the file on its own - doing weird things like duplicating the line you added several times inside the file, before crashing with cascading error boxes you have to click through just to exit the software again.
Beneath the surface as a casual user, there's little about Great Plains that feels like anything but a huge "hack" to force it to work in the Windows environment.
it's that the systems were debugged before the nonstop drive to cut costs. They launched just as buggy, but there was time and money to fix it. Nobody remembers the bugs, they just know the current system (mostly) works.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
text only interfaces or limited guis. Simple, non-multithreaded environments. Bloody Green Screens.
JavaScript apps do a hell of a lot more than the apps of the 80s. You had to _train_ folks on using those apps from 1980 because they were pretty basic. Let me write software designed for a highly trained operator who's expected to be in the job for decades and it'll be a lot better/different than what I write for somebody who's gonna be in the job for 6 months before they get canned/look for more pay.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Most of our older stuff ran on an AS/400. It's sad that a platform older than I am, on physical hardware that's a decade old and isn't even supported by a manufacturer anymore can do financials faster and better than modern Windows-based software.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
No problem, those sorts of systems still exist today. The GUI can be a layer on top, it doesn't need to be integrated at all levels like many of today's paradigms do. I mean, Javascript is barely a language and yet no one seems to care that it's unsuited for the purpose it's being used for, because people just don't know anymore that programming isn't just snapping lego parts together.
Alan Shark said in the article: "We’re dealing with an irrational public who wants greater and greater service delivery at the same time they want their taxes to be lower". There's really nothing irrational about that. The public is asking the municipalities to do things more efficiently, but without accountability that will never happen. The best way to fix it? Privatize it. All of it.
This is no different than taking care of roads, water supply or sewers. If we aren't willing to pay for our infrastructure, it goes by the wayside and gets neglected.
between the terminal and emacs, I don't use a mouse now - what's the big deal?
Having worked in this type of environment, I've observed something else too.
The old system is crufty, user-hostile and doesn't meet business expectations. Yet people seem willing to tolerate the shortcomings because... it's an old system that is crufty, user-hostile and doesn't meet business expectations! I mean it's a piece of garbage so of course it's terrible!
It's a strange piece of circular logic based upon cynicism, low expectations and inertia.
It took her office almost four years to secure $36 million for updated assessors' hardware and software that can, among other things, give priority to cases in which delays may prove costly. The design requirements are due to be finalized this summer." $36mil? For some software and computer hardware that records simple information in a database? No wonder it took four years to get that funding. I'd have given them about a tenth of that, tell them to go hire 2-3 programmers, get some servers and PCs from Dell and stop bugging me for ridiculous amounts of money...
You have to double the cost from 36 million to 72 million and expect a long delay in implementation and it won't work the way they said it would or at all and they will have to scrap it in the end and go back to paper and pencils because they tossed out the old system. Real world.
E Proelio Veritas.
Sounds like they want a replacement system full of features, and without bugs, which sounds very expensive. The current system has known bugs, and limited features... which already eliminated most of the tedious human labor, and paper files of the past. Sounds like it is cheaper to well pay the employees whom deal with the quirky computer system. Instead of the gigantic cost of developing a perfect system, or the armies of employees for a no computer system.
Chu says. It took her office almost four years to secure $36 million for updated assessors' hardware and software that can, among other things, give priority to cases in which delays may prove costly. did she fall and bump her head? $36 mil for 1000 PCs, 3 Servers, network infrastructure upgrades and some basic RDBMS software that is not exposed to the Internet and runs like 4 hours out of the day which is at best 20% utilization of which most is quiet and docile database activity.. the price tag for the software should be $75k or less, and annual maintenance support at $5k at best, and oh wait.. the internal IT folks need some sense of existence and do the work themselves versus just point at the 3rd party vendors to do whatever they don't want to do or fear risking their cushy pensions for doing 5 years worth of real work over a 20 year period. ;-) hmmmm..
oh well, someone has to say it -- i digress.
Windows XP will NEVER DIE.
How hard can it be to install a payroll system? Well, the police run on a three shift day, eight hours each day, unless it is a two shift day, 12 hours per shift. The fireman run one shift a week, a 56 hour shift, unless it is not. It is possible for an employee to work under five different sets of "union" rules, overtime standards, holidays, etc. per day. When I left, they had ten programmers dedicated to the payroll system, in COBOL on large IBM mainframes.
I was friends with a worker in the movie industry. She had to have the paychecks ready by the time the workers left the lot for the day.
Still use any of the code from 1960s?
I was expecting Netware to be mentioned. No bricked-up server listed still running though.
If it ainâ(TM)t broke donâ(TM)t fix it.
Plus all the training, plus all the supporting manual procedures.
All the governments will crash soon because of debt anyway. Then ai will take over.
See? No worries. It is all taken care of. The universe is unfolding according to plan.
Thank you, so true!!
Software in the 80's actually worked for the most part. "Programming" was about getting it right and proving it was right before release.
Today it's about getting launched as fast as possible and bugs be damned. Maybe we'll fix it with a patch is it's profitable to do so (hint, it never is). Today's software is garbage. And that's why a computer that has 1,900,000 times the number crunching ability feels slower.
Here's a perhaps apocryphal story I heard from an old friend. At the time he was with a consultancy that did work for the City.
About 15 years ago the City of SF felt that their old mainframe-based financial software was showing its age. This was 100% bespoke software, iirc written in COBOL. Lots of lawful-corruption programmed into it, of course. So the City asked Oracle for an estimate on what it would cost to "upgrade" to Oracle Financials.
So Oracle sends in a pair of consultants to examine the old software. After a month they make their report: If the City wants to migrate to Oracle Financials, they are going to need to pay Oracle $10 million. FOR A PROJECT PLAN AND COST ESTIMATE. The actual migration was expected to cost much more.
Needless to say, the City kept their old software.
How accurate is this story? No idea - it came to me third hand. How plausible is it? Very plausible.
Hire some software students to translate the SF code into a modern programming language. Hire an experienced programmer to supervise the work of the students. And work with the people who deal with the existing software, to learn how it works.
With a more modern language, there would be some changes to the code's logic. For example, the students would be using sw objects, which aren't in the existing code. Plus they would design and code the GUI. But hopefully the students wouldn't have to re-design the entire application.
Hiring students to do this work would give the students work experience, would let SF sw managers check out the students' work, and hopefully would get the job done well at a good price.
Thank God!
San Francisco rarely conjures images of creaky, decades-old technology, but
but BART.
And their trams on the F line look pretty outdated, too. (and I didn't even had to go back to the obviously historic cable cars for that joke, but seriously, BART should go to a museum)
bickerdyke
How hard is it to write software that just adds $2,000 - $10,000 to the value each year?
Pretty sure that is all they do around here.
It's a private company here, so sending someone out to look costs money. Also, if they don't keep making more money for the government, they might get replaced by some other private company.
Easily re-written:
"City tools designed and built in 1980, still effective 40 years later, with near-zero funds wasted in multiple upgrades along the way."
Or perhaps:
"Tax-payers uninteresting in making government employees' jobs easier, at great expense."
Hey, then there's:
"BIC pens, glass windows, concrete, and electrical wiring from the '80s still running most government offices -- computers too."
And finally:
"Government offices located in buildings that don't meet modern building codes. They haven't met building codes since they were built in the '80s."
So sorry you need to hit a few more key strokes to sell real estate. Boohoo. I'm not paying $36 million dollars to make your job a little easier. If you want to pay for it, go ahead. I think it's still fine as-is. Call me when the computer stops working.
Until then, I praise the well-designed, well-thought-out, and well-acquisitioned systems already in-place.
Government building are often over 100 years old. They don't work with a mouse either. Should we trash them?
Sometimes, the toilets are 40-50-60 years old and still work fine. The basic toilet is unchanged from it's common availability in the 1880's (and it's invention circa 16th century!).
Stupid fucking article from people who probably only know how to program in Java. Fucktards.