

Computer says no - edw519
http://www.economist.com/node/16646044?story_id=16646044

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nkassis
I like how old mainframe apps are always blamed in these articles. These apps
written ages ago are in my view quite incredible. How many of us have written
software that will be used 30 years from now?

Every time I hear about great rewrites of mainframe application (Air control
fiasco of a few years ago) I just am amazed at what the original programmers
managed to build which is still in use.

Rewriting that stuff means rewriting all the business logic embedded in those
applications. I expect that most of the time, new apps must follow the exact
flow the old apps had or else the employees using it won't like it. I've seen
this first hand, were talking about buttons being placed exactly the same way.

Even if these banks modernized, the business processes would stay the same.

~~~
cema

      How many of us have written software 
      that will be used 30 years from now?
    

We may not always know that.

~~~
clistctrl
god i hope some of the crap i wrote when I was just starting dies in a pit of
flames. To see it live for 30 years would be a nightmare spanning generations.

~~~
chopsueyar
You were one of the Windows ME developers?

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pragmatic
Is it me or doesn't this make any sense?

 _But what really sets Metro Bank apart is its state-of-the-art IT system._

Then at the end:

 _With such grand designs, isn’t Vernon Hill, one of the bank’s founders,
tempted to build an IT system of his own? “I hate programmers,” replies this
dyed-in-the-wool entrepreneur. “They only cause trouble.”_

Didn't they already build a state of the art IT system?

~~~
jacquesm
Maybe they outsourced the building of it?

~~~
shrikant
They did. Pretty much all of it.

~~~
gaius
To whom? Accidenture?

~~~
aswanson
How in the world do companies like that stay in business being so incompetent?
At some point, don't a series of epic disasters at least _begin_ to tarnish a
reputation?

~~~
Tamerlin
You could say the same about most government contractors. I suspect that there
are a lot of kickbacks involved, because none of the projects I was ever
involved in at government contracting firms ever went well -- ALL of them had
a lot more people than necessary, and underutilized the best talent they had.

The one thing that they had in common with the commercial companies I worked
for is that instead of jettisoning the least competent so that the rest of us
could do our jobs, they promoted those folks and put them in charge.

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CapitalistCartr
" . . . isn’t Vernon Hill, one of the bank’s founders, tempted to build an IT
system of his own? I hate programmers, replies this dyed-in-the-wool
entrepreneur. They only cause trouble."

Spoken like someone who's been there on a few projects.

~~~
arethuza
A banker accusing programmers of causing trouble??

~~~
nkassis
well to be fair, the programmers were part of the latest wave of problems.

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pragmatic
Bonus: <http://www.economist.com/comment/604403#comment-604403>

One of the best explanations between community banks and the "big" banks.

I worked for a company that is now part of Fiserv.

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rbanffy
Loved the reference to <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZAoMv_QnAU>

~~~
swedegeek
Haha. The title is exactly why I checked out the link. It was indeed about
British banks. Here's the 6s version of the reference...

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOdjCb4LwQY>

Good stuff.

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Marticus
Completely agreed - as a former software developer for banks, they really
don't like working on their own stuff - they typically buy it off the shelf,
and don't ever think to do a hardware overhaul.

But then again, while working in the industry, there seems to also be a HUGE
disconnect between banks' perception of technology and the part it actually
plays. Chase seems to be getting into a good position as a result of closing
that gap (pictures of checks deposited to your acct via phone).

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mseebach
The banks website seems to be at <https://www.metrobankonline.co.uk/> .. but
Chrome says the SSL certificate is signed by an unknown authority, who claims
to be VeriSign.

~~~
agl
The server is misconfigured: it's missing intermediate certificates in its
chain. Chrome 6.x should be able to work around this on all platforms at the
cost of making the site slower.

Additionally, the server is open to prefix attacks.

For a bank, that's a pretty miserable state of affairs.

~~~
thwarted
_Chrome 6.x should be able to work around this on all platforms at the cost of
making the site slower._

This sounds, uh, weird. Got a link to more information? I'd like to see the
rationale for having the browser subvert misconfigured servers; this would
seem to undermine the already precarious SSL state we're in.

~~~
agl
Chrome 6 uses NSS on all platforms and NSS will download missing intermediate
certificates via HTTP, if the URL is given in an AIA extension.

This is pretty much standard browser behaviour I'm afraid. One of the many
unfortunate realities of the web.

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vishaldpatel
Relavent Little Britain sketch:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZAoMv_QnAU&feature=relat...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZAoMv_QnAU&feature=related)

------
Revisor
_Without appropriate design, yesterday's success is tomorrow's straightjacket,
since today's great applications are tomorrow's legacy systems._

Bill Buxton in Sketching User Experiences, page 209

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dsspence
"Philip OCarroll wrote: Jul 23rd 2010 12:21 GMT

I hate bankers - they only cause trouble.

e.g. financial catastrophe, global depression"

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thinkcomp
Most banks in the U.S. outsource their IT to Fiserv or FIS these days.

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rick_2047
This really creeps me out you know. Money has a first person ontology. Paper,
metal, gold or bits are money because we believe its money. But if the
_reported numbers for the bank’s exposure were regularly billions of dollars
adrift of reality_ then now can I believe that what I have is not going to
disappear in a glitch or is created because of a glitch.

Disclaimer:I am not an economist nor do I earn anything right now. So if this
is an uneducated or miss educated comment please fill free to give references.

~~~
jacquesm
It's really no surprise. If a bank is processing data all the time in various,
non-connected systems then the only way to know the actual state is to stop
accepting input and to let all processes synchronize to the point where you
can total things up. Anything else is going to almost certainly miss a bunch
of stuff that is in the midst of being updated on one system, but not yet
available on another, or counted double.

~~~
adw
Classic example: the entire clearing system is eventually consistent.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clearing_(finance)>

~~~
gaius
Also see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_linked_settlement>

