This is going to be the vibe coding version of the Chernobyl disaster, a wholly preventable failure caused by a combination of hubris, incompetence and design flaws.
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This took five minutes if you already have an on line account. All the data is linked on the home page. If you’re not retired, find and save your 2023 earnings report. They send one every year with every year listed.
He cut phone/web service & closed field offices. He's deliberately sabotaging the system to erode public trust so they can dismantle it completely. Never mind the people who've paid into the nearly $3 Trillion fund for 30-40 yrs & won't see a dime of it. Billionaires lining their own pockets again.
Get it right. DOGE Musk-Harem Eunuchs. No penis. No balls. They spend their time keeping Elons wives from infighting while they're not ejecting government staff from their offices and pretending to code. They are probably out on the streets pretending to be ICE too. I saw one in a video from CPAC.
Every software developer knows what it means to rebuild a code base that has grown over decades. It will take 5 to 10 years to completely replace the old system. Anyone who wants to do this faster is an amateur. Anyone who wants to do it in months is a fraud and a hasadeur.
putting in a back door is easy, and probably already done by the douge-canoe. this great 'rebuilding sounds like ya publicity stunt to me. nothing more.
Subject of a bunch of movies - these shit stains are going to siphon off dollars hoping nobody notices. Then, when they’re gone, we’ll find the accounts are empty.
I almost believe that ketamine junky who destroyed twitter and brought thousands of bugs including data disappearance will do this one much more efficient 🤡
They don't need to understand the data. They'll feed it into an AI algorythm to pick out the minorities they want to target and identify the ones with money before they kick them out with the rest, or put them in camps.
Yeah, sorry for the tone, I realise what you mean. They could'nt organise a pissup in a brewery. I'm just thinking further off than that. It's just that I've been reading about the possibility and outcome of this for years.
Same basic failure mode as chernobyl. Managerial vibes too.
The same kind of flagrant lying and truth dodging from subordinates more interested in impressing the current regime. Leaders ignoring what little pertinent fact they're provided for the most lucrative narrative. It's fucking uncanny.
spoiler: They’ll use AI, it won’t work, then Musk will demand some trillion dollar contract to rebuild from scratch, and they project will never be completed, ending Social Security as we know it.
I've seen AIs try to digest Fortran for an old analytical chemistry program of less than 10k lines and it ain't happening without a moonshot effort for millions of lines of code.
Took a grad student and his supervisor a year, in which both were forced to learn Fortran 77(?).
Convenient that this "solution" nobody asked for comes up the same day he sells Twitter to his AI company to try to shelter it from banks calling his loans. Now said AI company is setting itself up for a bunch of federal contracts/corporate welfare to supposedly fix SSA.
He’s reprogramming the FAA systems and SSA system? He does the “audit” for waste, fraud,and abuse; and then hires himself to fix each agency in addition to not finding any W,F,&A in the billions of contracts he has? Seems pretty fishy to me. Just saying…
I was about to say, I bet idiots believe "Low level" and "Old" in terms of programming language means "Bad" and not just "Way closer to actually using a computer with no middle man or crutches"
I preferred assembly back in 70’s and 80’s mostly batch overnight updates. And yes you could grab the hardware so none of the other partitions got their slice.
What I mean is that I'm not a coder, but I like to know about the subject and I did actually have ago at entering assembly language into our ZX-Spectrum, from books and magazines in the 80s. I think one might have been for the game frogger, if I remember correctly.
How else is Musk going to profit off of his connections? He needs to make his money back and build in a trapdoor! Probably skim a percentage while hes at it.
😆😭🤣🤣🤣 Good luck with that - I worked as a BSA to reverse engineer a cobol sales system early in my career - we spent a year just documenting the code. What a f’ing disaster
The problem is the the timeline. “DOGE wants it done in months.” It is not a simple project, if it were, banks, schools, commercial software would have done it already.
These people genuinely don’t understand why old and long running systems stay in place for so long. There is a reason a lot of insurance (especially life insurance) companies still use a microsoft dos based system for most of their data processing
Just ANOTHER LIE by MUSK. More PROOF the IDIOT MUSK has ZERO CLUE about Software Development Phases/Timelines
It's just ANOTHER poorly thought out Musk Project.
Phases:
1. ANALYSIS/DOCUMENTATION of the current functionality, data structures of the current SS system - 6 months MINIMUM.
(1/?) 👇
2. DESIGN: 6 mo (min)
3. DEVELOPMENT: 12 mo (min)
4. TESTING/DEBUGGING: 6 mo (min)
5. FIXING BUGS: 6 mo (min)
6. TEST DEPLOYMENT/FIXING BUGS: 6 mo (min)
6. DELIVERY: 3.5-5.0 YEARS.
(2/?) 👇
Note: No matter HOW MUCH Manpower you throw at a Software Project, TOO MUCH Manpower can have a NEGATIVE IMPACT and SLOW it DOWN
This statement by Musk is just ANOTHER Overpromised/Underdelivered sack of BS 💩just like his CYBERJUNK 🗑️, FSD 😂, and Exploding Rockets 💥
Google "Vegas Loop" (3/3)
This is Musk's MO. Decide that a problem needs to be fixed in a ridiculous time frame and then sack anyone who disagrees...whether the thing is achieved or not is irrelevant...
Software doesn't rot. As long as it still meets requirements (e.g. transaction processing capability, correctness, security, durability, etc...) then don't replace it.
I've been a software engineer for 29 years. These people are poster-children for the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Our ageist society has programmed so many to disdain those in their 50s, 60s or older. It's diabolical to not respect LIVED EXPERIENCEs & people who were THERE. I'll never understand the "OK Boomer" crowd. I have family in their 70s+ who run circles around many people intellectually & physically.
As someone who will be 80 next month, feel that I can also state concern: too many politicians are simply staying too long. Obviously referring to Schumer but others as well! OAC would have been a great committee chair… not sure this seniority approach is working for us.
AOC would never be a great anything except social media influencer/or whatever she does 🥱 because she's intentionally anti-Black. Most of her fans don't notice because why would they? If anti-Blackness doesn't impact them, THEY don't care. It impacts me, so I care. I'm sure she's useful somehow 🤷🏾♀️
I'd be lost without my elders who lived through Jim Crow. Meaning, don't dismiss on the basis of age alone. Schumer is not useless due to his age. He's useless because he doesn't care. Newsom: young, charismatic, useless & dangerous. It's not the age, it's the ideology. Fetterman young & dangerous.
Obviously not dismissing elders, but old approaches have not been a match for the constant lies and crimes. Even the Justice System is not fast enough to stop the planes. BTW, think you are right about Schumer…. also think Jasmine Crocket is the best, even more effective than AOC.
Technically it's not the software that rots, but the assumptions built into it. Requirements, expectations, usage patterns change, people familiar with the code base leave, documentation becomes inaccessible (e.g., because the context becomes outdated), tool chains don't run on modern hardware, ...
(FWIW I do agree with the general sentiment: having some rock star coders relying on hubris rather than domain experience rewrite it is a recipe for disaster - even if they were as brilliant as purpoted to be.)
Most who are proficient are hitting their 70's right now. Many are war veterans & possibly pissed at the currrent administration - so, even if they could work/consult- they probably won't. I understand they plan to use AI to solve the COBOL problem. (Laughing hard; peed a little)
Also, hubs is a Mainframe Systems Associate Director with about 30 years of experience. This is NOT going to end well. These people are not only incompetent but absolutely dumber than a stump FFS.
Does anyone else who worked on “digital transformation” efforts feel extremely queasy and guilty, right now? We were gaslit and gaslighting everyone else, and that culture is what hatched this shit right here.
I'm not a coder, but even I know what you're talking about. At least the Millenium bug was a real problem that needed solving, even if it was a mountain of drudgery. It also kick-started the careers of countless young coders.
They CCL about the damage they're doing. The chaos is so this bunch of people who have already told the world what they want to do can get their hands on a database that the guy they've all been publicly saluting would have not just have killed for (a given), but bent over and be sodomised for.
Let us worry about our Social Security. It was fine and workable. Now it will not be fine and workable. How will us old folks navigate any of their sabotage?
I was forced to take a Cobol computer science class in the 70s. Punch cards fed into a giant A-Frame computer. No monitor - plenty of blind guesswork. It was a real pain. Surely the DOGEboys are clueless when it comes to Cobol, and will fuckitup beyond belief. Appears that's their goal.
They want the system written to favor the rich completely. Rewriting the code and implementing a new system, would basically eliminate any possible way of reversing what they’re changing. They know they’re about to lose quickly.
Indicative of the real welfare queens and terrorists you need to worry about, not someone from another country. They're right in your backyard, running multi-billion dollar corporations, and holding office.
Your oppression is their profession.
PS: "Big Balls" plans to replace the entire COBOL code base with an app that always responds: "SSA has determined your age is greater than 150 years, and therefore not eligible for SSA benefits"
1. There's no need to replace cool.
2. If 1 woman can have a baby in 9 months, then 9 women.... no, wait a minute, that doesn't work. And neither will Elon's plan.
I wish there were a way to communicate to non-computer people just how *ridiculous* this idea really is. It's gotta be an intentional destruction of the current systems *and databases* that's the real objective, because their ability to pull this off is not just near zero: it's ZERO.
Also, stop trying to frame evil projects of the American capitalist system with these wack ass Cold War narratives. This is the American system doing American things. Come on man!
Calling COBOL archaic makes me feel like I’m ancient. It’s a very easy to learn structured 3rd generation programming language. The DOGE boiz probably will fuck it up though.
Honestly, Elon is a fucking idiot, so why would the Muskrats be any different? And since the entire federal government is being run by a raft of blundering fools, there is no one smart enough to stop them. Never thought I would see the US go down so quickly. It’s up to ‘we, the people’, to end it.
"Months," it would take months to plan the changes alone! It isn't enough time to get the code out of testing. They intend to destroy it beyond repair.
I sure hope they have good backup and recovery plans.
Senior software engineer son-in-law says:
They will migrate people to the new system. It will explode. They will move people back. It will still take many years. They have no idea how good COBOL/ISAM is and their attempt to replace it quickly with vibe coding will backfire spectacularly.
Old 70s COBOL programmer here. Your SIL is a smart guy. That code has been in use for years, the tires have been kicked repeatedly and little fixes have been added here and there on the fly but not documented.
There are more old mainframes running things on time-tested old code.
As someone in that space from 1992-2014 as a government contractor on financial systems I keep hearing this and I just hope they keep backups cuz you’re going to have resurrect them later
Or who don't know how to screenshot all their records from the website. Which I've done. Not that it will help. If the system fails, I could be dead on the street within months.
i mean...you can't even spell Martial Law 🤦♀️ Also, Martial Law isn't going to do jack shit except oppress the little guy (the working-class americans).
Maybe he wanted to "marshal" (gather) what little remains of the Law that's been decimated by Trump's all-out assault on due process, constitutional rights, and basic fucking empathy.
But, with Trump destroying so much (stock market, US global relationships, the judiciary, global trade and more), I see a point where Trump's "immigrant invasion" rhetoric could lead to declaration of Martial Law -- and his supporters would applaud it.
While I hope that's not the case, the thought has certainly been in the back of my mind.
Since our enemies are now friends and our former friends are now enemies, anything is possible.
This needs to be stopped. There's a reason these systems haven't been "modernized". They are going to break it, and do the "Oops we lost it all" ... please download your social security statements.
No need. The old logic-based programming languages like COBOL and RPG are stable. That's why older financial systems use them. No whiz-bang needed, they get the job done.
One, they work; the language is old, but there is enough support and programmers to go on.
Two, the cost of rewriting in another language is prohibitive: the new systems must work just as well and in the same way as the old ones, and this means *lots* of testing and time. This means...
... more spending, because the old systems must continue being maintained while the new ones are developed and tested.
DOGE and Musk, trying to cut corners, will replace current systems with buggy ones, at twice the cost and time, instead of doing the work right in the first place.
That being said, these little goofy goobers can't handle keeping Twitter online and what does it run off of? Elixir/Erlang and Phoenix as the frontend most likely
Also, C is kinda trash and also pretty old all things considered and we all know Rust or Golang aren't "replacing" five decades of C codebase anytime soon. This really shouldn't be a hard task but I bet it will be anyway because again, can barely keep Twitter up
It doesn't have to work, it just needs to funnel a ton of money to xAI so Musk doesn't go bankrupt. Sort of like exploding rockets on the federal dime.
Yep. I could make an entire thread of issues they are going to hit immediately, and then due to modernization things they haven’t even had nightmares about yet.
To start, replacing hardware, most terminals are virtual these days running windows but how many of those machines run modern software?
Well, it *starts* with a lack of a software spec for the existing system, then progresses to a lack of a software spec for the replacement system, followed by a lack of a definition of edge cases to test against, and ends with a total lack of intention of doing any testing.
Let’s not forget the jokes. There are jokes in the code that there is no one alive who knows them anymore. Or the things with naming that has nothing to do with what they are because they were repurposed.
Ohhhh, definitely in the realm of possibility. Let’s just say that I’m well acquainted with COBOL… and I’m not that elderly 😂
It’s not something that’s taught today. Any fool who tinkers with that, but is not well versed in it, is asking for BIG issues 🤨
Thats usual for moderning a simple mainframe system a bank or insurance company might use, this would need to be testing and organization at a scale I don’t even know is possible to do it in months.
Yeah I work for a big legacy payments and we’re rebuilding a processing system from scratch. I’m convinced* the reason we’re doing it that way is because half the people who know how the old one works are dead and a quarter of the documentation is in their heads
* I am not alone with this hypothesis
it being written in such an archaic programming language also affords it some degree of added security, elon and his boys couldn't even figure it out obviously, and if THEY rewrite it we are SO fucked, it's going to have so many vulnerabilities, though it will be a miracle if it even works at all
Plus the enterprise server (mainframe) hosting the app is the most secure to date.
It is an old programming language designed for business applications such as this, insurance, banking, utilities. You know, the big mutha's.
This isn't risking. This WILL collapse SSA. My MAGA oldsters will be wondering what the hell happened. They'll curse Musk's name while wailing, "If only trump had known! He would have stopped this!"..... like the fools they are.
Nah, they’ll just blame Biden. Hell, they’re still harping on him after he left office. News flash, MAGA… Biden is not in the White House. You don’t get to blame him anymore.
True enough. People have a bad habit of blaming previous administrations for screw ups when a new one just comes in.
Although... the current administration ran on destroying the government... MAGA expected less?
I'm a former R, been NeverTrump since '16. Equal opportunity hater of both parties.
My husband is retired from IT work. He programmed and managed COBOL systems for 20+ years.
A year at the VERY least. And the most important stage: Testing. It's what is most easily forgotten. I doubt the Mr. Musk has much experience writing COBOL code.
You also do these things in slices, gradually strangling out the old system until it is no longer used. Just planning an upgrade of a system of this size at a high level would take months…
Living way too close to launchpads and watching things go wrong, I'm afraid their testing is indeed "move fast and break things." That won't be funny or cute with COBOL & SS, same with Starship raining debris through crowded flight paths. He doesn't care.
I have been on several large COBOL conversion projects to newer systems. (I'm now retired) They take a LONG TIME with a good sized experienced team, you need good project managers, and extensive testing. Or else it will be a fiasco,and we sure don't need that with Social Security.
That's great. I didn't just single you out or anything, though. This thing will need lots of eyes on it to see just what these scary people have been up to. Experience and knowledge of very specific stuff will be needed.
The White House response to the Signal debacle was "We'll get Elon to look into it because he's a supergenius". I can't see it being any different in this case.
JFC...what are they going to replace that with? Ruby on Rails? The few people who know COBOL who haven't retired are probably still debugging old versions of Peoplesoft.
"Wait, which release are we using? I could swear this worked yesterday, but some function seems to be working differently. Oh well, it's just one edge case..."
Musk should invent his own esolang that's written in expired memes, doesn't make any sense, and doesn't even qualify as a programming language, because this is the same guy who thought his "127.0.0.7 rm -rf woke_mind_virus" Tweet made a lick of fucking sense.
I spent 25+ years working in technology and I've worked for leadership in multiple companies who issued random, nonsensical demands in the forms of projects like this. This will fail spectacularly, but that might just be the point...
On MSNBC today, it was reported that when SS looked to upgrade, all the companies said it would take FIVE YEARS and with MORE people!!! He and his idiot DOGE are going to destroy the system!!!!
That's the plan, system will go down, no payments will made for 6-9 months while it's 'fixed', when it comes back on 100's of millions will have been wiped or/and payments reduced. trump will claim that he saved SSI.
Banks still use mainframes because they cannot be beaten for efficiently processing high volumes of transactions. And they can use the existing SSA system as long as needed as they re-write it. I do not believe they can actually do it because of the effort required, which is why it hasn’t been done.
Exactly. People would be amazed at how many banks and insurance companies still use it. It can’t be beat for crunching numbers and data. Ah, the good old days lol
I really enjoyed mainframes. I was a CICS sys prog and once you knew one IBM system you could easily figure out the others. IT was fun in the early days.
There's a dirty little secret that New York has. It's electrical grid is on a ancient computer system in which only a handful of people in the world still know how to program it. I knew that person who headed it up. Others tried to come in with modern programming languages and could...
It also needs to be replaced, at some point. Very few people learn COBOL, so the skills to maintain it are in short supply and the hardware it needs to run on is equally outdated.
Note: not endorsement of DOGE trying to do it in "months." That is guaranteed to fail.
After I watched Rogue One, I joked that the most realistic part was that the Empire still used tape because they would never deal with the headache of migrating from the legacy system
I'VE BEEN PROGRAMMING FOR 40 YEARS AND ALL OF DOG-E COULDN'T HOLD A CANDLE TO MY SKILLS. THEY ARE BLATANTLY GOING TO DESTROY SOCIAL SECURITY! AND FUCK MUSKRAT CALLING SOCIAL SECURITY A PONZE SCHEME. THAT'S MONEY AMERICANS EARNED!!!
MUSKRAT GET THE FUCK OUT AMERICA. GO BACK TO HELL.
I'VE BEEN PROGRAMMING FOR 40 YEARS AND ALL OF DOG-E COULDN'T HOLD A CANDLE TO MY SKILLS. THEY ARE BLATANTLY GOING TO DESTROY SOCIAL SECURITY! AND FUCK MUSKRAT CALLING SOCIAL SECURITY A PONZE SCHEME. THAT'S MONEY AMERICANS EARNED!!!
MUSKRAT GET THE FUCK OUT AMERICA. GO BACK TO HELL.
The problem is not that COBOL is archaic. It is STILL the best programming language for what these systems do. (I've coded in it and at least a dozen languages including assembler.) The problem is it's not taught because you can't code gaming apps.
FFS, just set up a training program and hire folks.
If there were a serious effort at efficiency, i.e., maintainability, there would be a competency/aptitude test for linear programming aptitude and then a COBOL training program for promising candidates.
P.S. Meaning anyone who learned programming gaming apps at the local technical college is the LAST person you want touching something written in COBOL.
They'll also need to migrate the data presumably. Surely it's still on an IDMS database with myriads of complex data relationships. Good luck migrating that to a relational database while rewriting the functionality.
There is no point to rewriting what is not broken in computer languages which are less suited to the task than COBOL. Indeed, COBOL is having a renaissance because languages good for manipulating computer game objects are useless for business applications. https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomtaulli/2020/07/13/cobol-language-call-it-a-comeback/
Indeed. The massive fraud is all of us, the peasants, wanting something out of the government that we paid into. The government should only exist to line HIS pocket, not buy the elderly food.
...or food for the poor, or schoolchildren, or...
Not to mention the local farmers and ranchers who will be hurt who have been serving their area's schoolchildren and neediest neighbors.
Why should we opt for training programs in an archaic language and whatnot instead of just rebuilding it with modern technology? Are we going to train newbies in perpetuity?
I worked in IT for over 40yrs. Wrote COBOL and JS. Ran a team of over 40 people. No way they can redevelop complex systems in a few days without a lot of tears!! Just naive to think so! These are critical systems not an F*G computer game!!
Not a straightforward job. I’ve done it. First of all a system function doc, then system design, then rewrite. SF would take 3-6 months. Same for SD. Rewrite would take at least two years if done properly and professionally. Plus you need people you can trust.
this is really the thing, the time to analyze and describe in perfect detail is too great. this system of steps to do many complicated things is too big, with too many steps and parameters, you would need ai to do all of that quick enough. so you would be asking ai to do the vibe coding itself too.
but to step back - why would you ever do this? why would you rush headlong to replace a largely working system? have they even mentioned what benefits they expect to achieve from doing a rewrite/reimplementation?
Has DOGE given the taxpayers a report of the failings of SSA as it now stands before we approve any changes or are all the adults on an alcohol break and the kids are in charge.
I hope they factor in the unnecessary re-writes to procedural calls to original infrastructure. Experience suggests writing a separate system that integrates with modern infrastructure may be a quicker, less costly and risky option? 🤷🏼♂️
Converting COBOL to API’s is only a part of the problem…
I'm not a programmer but logic suggests the PROPER way to handle this situation would be to create a brand new computer system, feed all SSA data into it, and then both systems in parallel for a couple of years to make sure the new one is giving the same results (just quicker) than the old one.
Like a startup, but for which the consequences are far more egregious and detrimental. With a startup it’s the poor hedge funders who likely pay for the failures.
Americans won't do shit. If we won't even do anything over all of the dead kids in elementary schools we're not going to do shit over missed payments to old people and the poor.
Most browbeaten people on earth and they think they're free. Bunch of debt slaves with no spine.
You may be right about not doing shit. You just might be totally wrong about what people will do when they have no money and nothing left to lose. Those young dick heads may want to lose the attitude...we old folks didn't get this far in life by being dumb.
We did do things over that though? I'm from CT. We enacted gun bans after Sandy Hook. Biden himself enacted more gun policy too while in office. It looks like CO is about to enact more policy. What exactly do ya want?
I beg to differ. For better or worse, people put up with a host of other BS...but folks will NOT put up with having their money fucked up. Would you? Doubtful.
Well, once the boomers aren’t getting their social security anymore, and if you’re able to convince the majority of them that it ISN’T a democrat’s fault, then maybe some of them will go “well shucks, maybe voting for the people running on a platform of actively making things worse wasn’t so smart
Financial aid counselor here. Please don't forget about last year's debacle rolling out the 2024-25 FAFSA. They had 5 years to plan the behind the scenes processing and still f*ed up royally.
You also separate the system into its constituent isolate systems before such a refactor. Then, you replace one subsystem at a time and set it up to run alongside the original to compare inputs and outputs for discrepancies against the original for a while before switchover.
Never ever touch code unless it’s really broken and you know who to call. This underlying mainframe technology includes JCL of which these young wannabe technocrats have no idea how this works. Oh, have I mentioned VSAM and QSAM file structures (indexed or not)? It’s going to explode in their face!
They’re doing this because it looks easy to them, and they’ve realized everything else is hard, they have few promises kept (and those are probably lies, too), and they’re desperate for wins.
“We [the Musky 💩 “we”] did it with Twitter and it only lost $30B dollars in market value and still works!”
There have been many attempts by the Federal government over the years to re-write systems developed in old COBOL code. This is very difficult, and many have failed, such as the FAA effort and the USDA -MIDAS effort.
It is possible to. E done in months if every single highly skilled COBOL programmer on the planet got together and only worked on that with highly skilled programmers in the end state programming language. But what doge has is highly reckless idiots that have some skills in programming
Meanwhile when payments stop, they'll just say every two weeks that it will be fixed in two weeks ad infinitum and the NY Times will believe them every time.
lol - obviously an estimate from one of the children he has working for him. They clearly don't know shit about fuck about building complex systems. They probably understand 1% of the system and their Dunning-Kruger dumbasses think they can build a new system in a few months lol -fucking noob idiots
Sadly, the estimate is probably fair. It doesn't take very long to write crappy software that fails miserably so that you can then complain about Social Security.
Well, even if that particular plan fails, at least the guy who did a double sieg-heil at a political rally didn't just get his hands on a financial database of the entire population, eh?
Yes, that stuff can be undone. The database, however, is supposed to be sacrasanct. Even if his access is cut off, this information is worth more than any of the wealth he holds, or stands to gain from contracts or removal of guardrails. It is literally priceless. Once he has it backed up...
Citizens need to be contacting their representatives to find out if he has people have been allowed anywhere near the system yet, because if they don't the data will end up on multiple servers all over the world awaiting him to either use it or sell it to the highest bidder. Like a genie in a bottle
It's just smoke and mirrors. They'll just add a new front-end for the users to make it look like they were doing something, while they where in there backdooring the database.
this is exactly what will happen, if even that. then they will take credit for rewriting the system. what an absolute joke, but so typical of not-invented-here maga. they say: all the auditing that was in here previously is crap (before having even close to enough time to evaluate it).
I bet they won't even be able to do that. Baby engineers are notoriously terrible at time estimates. I've never, in all my years, ever seen an overly-ambitious engineer hit their deadline. Months stretch to years. Systems are riddled with bugs. More often than not the whole thing gets scrapped.
Yep. Musk is a Liar Extraordinaire. If you look into his past actions & businesses...this is what he's done b4.
His first online business, Zip2 was just a facade. It didn't do what he claimed, but he was able to sell it, make a huge profit and move on to build Paypal and X.
When I bought my Nissan LEAF at the start of 2011, I wouldn't have even considered buying a Tesla, because of the relatively little I knew about the guy back then.
The South African IMMIGRANT needs to be REMOVED from ANYTHING and EVERYTHING that even REMOTELY has to do with the personal information of ANY AMERICAN CITIZEN. It is NONE of his DAMN BUSINESS. WHEN the HELL are they going to ARREST this guy. What he is doing CANNOT be legal.
Exactly! I'm in my 50s and have paid into social security my whole life. I can totally foresee them losing all that data, and we will never see a DIME of our retirement money!
if they were responsible, they would develop in parallel, not touching the existing system until the replacement was fully vetted/tested... I don't think they care and the new system will probably be missing a lot of "Wasteful" and "Unnecessary" options
If they were responsible. We know they aren’t. So there is that. Unless you mean responsible, for needless suffering and chaos, throughout literally the world. Then you would be correct.
And a Red Button that periodically stops payments for a month and everyone who calls to complain, they are deleted from the system and have to reapply, providing records of all their jobs and hours worked.
What you're actually going to get is a bunch of random ass new code put in by developers who won't be working to maintain a single line of it in the future, who as OP said, vibe coded their way into a paycheck and then bounced as soon as Elon becomes TOO problematic to bother with (it's coming)
Honestly THIS was the gripe Linus Torvalds was getting from the kernel writers about the Rust thing and everyone wonders why oleboy is cranky as hell. So Ubuntu naturally decided to literally do the opposite of what you just suggested here so that's gonna go over like the Hindenburg of course
Rust devs should have done what they are currently doing as I type this and convert the GNU utils into Rust and present that as a "we can actually do this at some point" case study from the beginning
Comments
The mid range machines are the periphery. You can't just pull the mainframes out. It really would all just collapse.
🚬😎
Simply look at the screwed up patch at Crowdstrike last year.
The same kind of flagrant lying and truth dodging from subordinates more interested in impressing the current regime. Leaders ignoring what little pertinent fact they're provided for the most lucrative narrative. It's fucking uncanny.
Took a grad student and his supervisor a year, in which both were forced to learn Fortran 77(?).
Are you enjoying that winning yet...
COBOL is trash, they should replace it all with Haskell and Captain Fuck Nuts or whatever Elon's cracker buddy's name is can get some of the Monad
I'm sure their intention is to help everyone they can to the greatest extent possible....
It's just ANOTHER poorly thought out Musk Project.
Phases:
1. ANALYSIS/DOCUMENTATION of the current functionality, data structures of the current SS system - 6 months MINIMUM.
(1/?) 👇
3. DEVELOPMENT: 12 mo (min)
4. TESTING/DEBUGGING: 6 mo (min)
5. FIXING BUGS: 6 mo (min)
6. TEST DEPLOYMENT/FIXING BUGS: 6 mo (min)
6. DELIVERY: 3.5-5.0 YEARS.
(2/?) 👇
This statement by Musk is just ANOTHER Overpromised/Underdelivered sack of BS 💩just like his CYBERJUNK 🗑️, FSD 😂, and Exploding Rockets 💥
Google "Vegas Loop" (3/3)
I've been a software engineer for 29 years. These people are poster-children for the Dunning-Kruger effect.
The analogy might better fit if the USSR had straight up nuked Chernobyl.
A dead SSA recipient no longer needs the money paid into the system FOR and BY them.
Simply, unequivocally not a genius
NOT GOING TO HAPPEN
Not gonna happen indeed.
Your oppression is their profession.
2. If 1 woman can have a baby in 9 months, then 9 women.... no, wait a minute, that doesn't work. And neither will Elon's plan.
I sure hope they have good backup and recovery plans.
They will migrate people to the new system. It will explode. They will move people back. It will still take many years. They have no idea how good COBOL/ISAM is and their attempt to replace it quickly with vibe coding will backfire spectacularly.
There are more old mainframes running things on time-tested old code.
You can go online to complain and argue with AI bot.
Or go to where you thought was an SSA field office.
Actually impossible.
Contact your US congressional representative and your senators and let them know: We need congressional approval to invoke Marshal Law.
But, with Trump destroying so much (stock market, US global relationships, the judiciary, global trade and more), I see a point where Trump's "immigrant invasion" rhetoric could lead to declaration of Martial Law -- and his supporters would applaud it.
Since our enemies are now friends and our former friends are now enemies, anything is possible.
Two, the cost of rewriting in another language is prohibitive: the new systems must work just as well and in the same way as the old ones, and this means *lots* of testing and time. This means...
DOGE and Musk, trying to cut corners, will replace current systems with buggy ones, at twice the cost and time, instead of doing the work right in the first place.
I hate these Musk tools.
That being said, these little goofy goobers can't handle keeping Twitter online and what does it run off of? Elixir/Erlang and Phoenix as the frontend most likely
To start, replacing hardware, most terminals are virtual these days running windows but how many of those machines run modern software?
It’s not something that’s taught today. Any fool who tinkers with that, but is not well versed in it, is asking for BIG issues 🤨
* I am not alone with this hypothesis
It is an old programming language designed for business applications such as this, insurance, banking, utilities. You know, the big mutha's.
Congress! DO NOT let this happen!
Although... the current administration ran on destroying the government... MAGA expected less?
I'm a former R, been NeverTrump since '16. Equal opportunity hater of both parties.
A year at the VERY least. And the most important stage: Testing. It's what is most easily forgotten. I doubt the Mr. Musk has much experience writing COBOL code.
With a big bang you are guaranteed a big bang…
(And no, not in Dyalog APL either)
"Wait, which release are we using? I could swear this worked yesterday, but some function seems to be working differently. Oh well, it's just one edge case..."
When i retired in 2022 we were right in the middle of a system rewrite. Was on like yr 3, and it wasn't the SSA. Rewrite from C to .net C#
Note: not endorsement of DOGE trying to do it in "months." That is guaranteed to fail.
MUSKRAT GET THE FUCK OUT AMERICA. GO BACK TO HELL.
MUSKRAT GET THE FUCK OUT AMERICA. GO BACK TO HELL.
“If your opponent is making a mistake, don’t stop them”
-Sun Tzu
FFS, just set up a training program and hire folks.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomtaulli/2020/07/13/cobol-language-call-it-a-comeback/
Not to mention the local farmers and ranchers who will be hurt who have been serving their area's schoolchildren and neediest neighbors.
I asked Grok to explain this post; after considerable pause it said:
...humorous reference...contrasting with real-world political discussions around security roles in 2025.
...nicknames like "Tampon Tim" from opponents.
The past week didn't happen. It's still on his side.
Converting COBOL to API’s is only a part of the problem…
Who's driving? (read the quotes!):
https://theplotagainstamerica.com
Look familiar? (already on our way)
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/law-and-justice-in-the-third-reich
Heading here (believe it!):
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/what-groups-of-people-did-the-nazis-target
This. Is. Real!
Share online, offline, everywhere!
There is no good will involved. NONE.
Most browbeaten people on earth and they think they're free. Bunch of debt slaves with no spine.
I cannot. It’s sad really. More pathetic.
Start looking harder.
I have a T-Shirt that reads: Common Sense is like deodorant. Those who need it the most, never use it.
(I live in a blue state & don't associate with MAGAts)
YOU DO YOUR WORK SEPARATE FROM THE SYSTEM AND TRANSFER IT WHEN YOU CONFIRM IT WORKS.
Trying to rebuild a code base from the original from the ground up while running it is like building a racecar on the track.
Idiots.
No... you don't need to show me the door... I'll see myself...
Anyone?
I have not seen robust documentation of what goes on in JCL, VSAM, QSAM et cetera either.
Comparison to Chernobyl is legit as it was a meltdown.
“We [the Musky 💩 “we”] did it with Twitter and it only lost $30B dollars in market value and still works!”
I strong suspect this is the exact plan.
We've got a lot of work to undo this bull.
His first online business, Zip2 was just a facade. It didn't do what he claimed, but he was able to sell it, make a huge profit and move on to build Paypal and X.
Musk is a Ponzi Scheme.
...Ponzi Scheme.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgMIcS8Njfc