this post was submitted on 28 Mar 2025
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Ah yes, a classic tale...
"We're going to take this perfectly efficient and functional COBOL code base and rewrite it in Java! And we'll do it in a few months!"
So many more competent people and organizations than them have already tried this and spectacularly crashed and burned. There are literal case studies on these types of failed endeavors.
I bet they'll do it in Waterfall too.
It's interesting. If they use Grok, this could well be the deathknell for vibe programming (at least for now). It's just fucking tragic that their hubris will cause grief and pain to so many Americans - and cost the lives of more than a few.
Edit: Fixed some typos.
Jokes aside, nothing wrong with rewriting in Java. It is well-suited for this kind of thing.
Rewriting it in anything without fully understanding the original code (the fact they think 150yo are collecting benefits tells me they don't) is the biggest mistake here. I own codebases much smaller than the SSA code and there are still things I don't fully understand about it AND I've caused outages because of it.
No. Java is not suited for this. This code runs on mainframes not some x86 shitbox cluster of dell blades. They literally could not purchase the hardware needed to switch to java in the timeline given. I get what you're trying to say but in this case Java is a hard no.
Uh, Java is specifically supported by IBM in the Power and Z ISA, and they have both their own distribution, and guides for writing Java programs for mainframes in particular.
This shouldn't be a surprise, because after Cobol, Java is the most enterprise language that has ever enterprised.
How old do you think the mainframes running Social Security are?
Probably a mix of Z systems, that stuff goes back 20-odd years, and even then older code can still run on new Z systems which is something IBM brags about.
Mainframes aren't old they're just niche technology, and that includes enterprise Java software.
Think further back. Like late 80s to 90s IBM
Yeah, that's what they said, 20 years or so ago
Ok this is gonna hurt. 2005 was 20 years ago
Do you have reason to think that? Organizations that use mainframes keep them up-to-date in my experience.
Chatty government contractors. I imagine some parts are updated but at least 2 years ago there was still a load of legacy hardware kicking for them to speak of
Old enough to collect benefits themselves