
Three programmers fix Healthcare.gov in a weekend - psymen
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50158801n
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adamnemecek
It's been said before but the biggest issue the site has is not the front-end
but the integration with all the other gov't services. Which they are most
certainly not integrating with.

Also they should drop the 'the' from the name.

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phmagic
Large software systems implementers will continue to win multimillion-dollar
government contracts. To me, that's the most depressing thing about it all.
These implementers should be out of business with the shit they put out year
after year. How do we make sure they do not win another contract?

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thearn4
I think that awarding contracts to the lowest bidder is a recipe for disaster
if it is a software product being ordered.

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greyfade
Awarding contracts to a handful of large government contractors is always a
recipe for disaster, no matter what it is.

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pron
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6701517](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6701517)

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fmsf
In a weekend? lots of hacks, no tests...

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thenerdfiles

        <a href="news">Hacker News</a>
    

"Let me be clear – this does not mean you should ship code without tests.
Thorough tests. Carefully written tests. I’m saying that you shouldn’t write
tests first, because it limits your creativity and ultimately slows you down.
Stop fixing tests when your implementation breaks them, and start writing
awesome code without the fear of red." — "Mother Nature doesn’t use TDD, and
she’s done pretty damn well.", [http://compphi.com/2012/05/06/mother-nature-
doesnt-use-tdd-a...](http://compphi.com/2012/05/06/mother-nature-doesnt-use-
tdd-and-shes-done-pretty-damn-well/)

~~~
adamnemecek
That was quite possibly the worst analogy I've ever seen.

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thenerdfiles
Gut reactions come from the gut.

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adamnemecek
I'm not sure what you mean. The analogy just does not make sense. Mother
nature's way of solving problems is by throwing random solutions and millions
of years at them (you know the whole 'evolution' thing) and the solutions that
come out of this process are not exactly optimal. If you have millions of
years to finish your project, please go ahead and don't write tests. I think
that I will though. I also think that you are really misunderstanding the TDD
methodology if you think that writing tests somehow constrains your
creativity.

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LekkoscPiwa
Governmint: im just going through agile sprint 0 with fda. according to the
project manager sprint 0 will take weeks or even months! these people really
need to stop saying they are agile. The pace of anything happening is
horrible. Sprints taking months.... welcome to the government way of doing
things!

And what sprint 0 is all about? Onboarding. That's right they need months
jystvto give laptops to developers. As a guy coming from a start up i get
heart attack every time they rape vocabulary with agile, sprints, scrum master
or even daily stand ups that should be renamed to hour long meeting about why
we failed again...

