

The Great Recession, and why IT can't save the world - MykalMorton
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=31848&tag=wrapper;col1

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hga
I've read that the system that Goldman Sachs built with their proprietary
programming language Slang is one of the things that kept them from failing.

At this point it's not a great language, but they have a system where the
information about their "stuff" is not trapped in spreadsheets. So when the
world changes and their leaders need to figure out "what does this mean?",
"what happens if [fill in the blank]?", etc., the system can answer than
question much more quickly (a few hours?) than sending out a query to all
their business units which then manually compile the data from their (often
wrong) spreadsheets, pass that up the line where it's again manually compiled,
etc. etc.

Unfortunately this single firm type of system isn't a solution for Sudhakar
Ram's desire for e.g. traceability in instruments built on top of multiple
loans, and it would be quite hard to get there, given how much vital
information is buried in dead paper (plus all the privacy issues, etc. etc.)
But I would say we need to try.

