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Well, the problems come from all the (attempted) interaction with other government systems...none of which were meant to be compatible or accessible.
It's not so much the contractor failing to make it work as it is the contractor not telling the government it was out of its mind to even contemplate such a beast.
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With the current administration nothing surprises me.
Of course that would make me a racist terrorist?
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$678 million to create an enrolment website 
I could have done it for around 339,000 times less and that would probably still be overpriced...
[edit - typo correction]
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens
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Hey, it's cheaper than London's Millennium Tent, and the cost is subdivided across almost five times as many taxpayers, so stop complaining.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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I haven't made an exhaustive check for this, but it seems Obamacare was built using Ruby on Rails.
If that's the case, then I'm not surprised that they're having severe problems.
Personally I feel that the biggest problem with Ruby on Rails is that it can make incompetent developers look moderately competent - paving the way for software projects that would, and should, have been killed at their inception.
modified 26-Oct-13 7:37am.
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Quote: Personally I feel that the biggest problem with Ruby on Rails is that it can make incompetent developers look moderately competent
Proof of your statment might be found here: Clikety[^] 
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Yes, that's certainly one of the more inactive forums here on CP
But, seriously, I'm not bashing Ruby on Rails, as it makes it relatively easy to get something up and running - which is often a good thing.
Having said that - my feeling about Ruby on Rails is that it's not something I would recommend for production use on a high volume site, and I guess there was a reason for twitter to move from Ruby on Rails to java[^] - a move that I guess was pretty costly, and something that they would not have done if there was any possible way to stick with Ruby on Rails and still have a stable production platform.
I also think that working with a more complex platform weeds out some developers that doesn't have the experience required to work on complex projects - and that this is probably one of the major benefits of choosing a more complex platform.
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I really dont know much about Ruby On Rails or anything on a project on such a massive scale, but it nearly always seem to be a hugh problem in making automatic services for governments work properly, which is kind of wierd, as there is hugh benifits to be found in automating much of the work.
THere has been some previous discussions on this very subject here[^] on the obamacare web site and ruby on rails.
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Kenneth Haugland wrote: previous discussions on this very subject here[^]
Ahh, thanks for the link Kenneth ... missed that one ...
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What I'm curious about is the price, why was it so expressive?
I may be a little naive but I can't image a site costing that much. If it was a piece of electronic equipment then the government has standards that drive the price up but what causes a website to be so costly?
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Hi Mike 
Mike Hankey wrote: what causes a website to be so costly?
The usual suspect is ignorance on the part of the purchaser, and the 90% administrative overhead caused by that ignorance ...
QA should be perfomed by people who know quality when they see it - and that tends to require experience. An m.sc doesn't make you an expert, at best it makes you a novice with the potential to become an expert - something that takes time.
Having said that, I've also found that the US. government have some really good people when it comes to specifications, requirements and quality assurance - and that things like this happens when they, and the procedures they've put in place, are ignored in favor of less experienced, but more buzzword compliant, resources.
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Espen Harlinn wrote: The usual suspect is ignorance on the part of the purchaser, and the 90% administrative overhead caused by that ignorance ...
Yeah but $700,000,000 worth of ignorance? Oh wait a minute we're talking about the current administration...never mind!
Solution: Throw more money into it!
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It is not ignorance.
It is a common pattern in government administration that allows them to take money from tax payer's pocket and to fund their party, interests, or friends companies.
It is hacking, plain and simple. Money hacking.
I don't buy the stupidity reason anymore at this point.
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Nicolas Dorier wrote: I don't buy the stupidity reason anymore at this point
Nicolas, I've found that most people, politicans or otherwise, are honest. By that I mean that they would not knowingly commit a criminal act - I've also found that some people, for various reasons, appear to make an effort to stay ignorant as in "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil".
NIH has an enterprise architecture[^] designed to ensure that the number of f**kups related to information technology is kept to a minimum. The NIH enterprise architecture is a good one, but it obviously can't work if it's not implemented at all levels of the organization - meaning that under no circumstanses should anybody be allowed to cut corners and disregard the controls that the architecture formulates.
I'm making an educated guess here: If there were to be an investigation into the project they would find that the procedures outlined in the NIH enterprise architecture has not been followed, and that maybe one or two persons in key positions didn't know that they were expected to follow those procedures - I guess they would also discover that nobody was aware that they didn't follow the procedures.
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Espen Harlinn wrote: If that's the case, then I'm not surprised that they're having severe problems.
My understanding is that it's only used for the front-end web page serving, and the actual problems are with the back office portion.
Espen Harlinn wrote: Personally I feel that the biggest problem with Ruby on Rails is that it can make incompetent developers look moderately competent
Sadly true, but also true of everything Microsoft has been pushing for the last 10+ years as well.
Having worked with RoR for a year now (my 1 year anniversary with this technology is actually tomorrow!) I cringe at the coding that I've seen, but no less so than the coding horrors I see in other languages, when it comes down to it. So, like usual, it's not the technology but the people, and it doesn't matter if it's Ruby, VB, C, C++, or whatever else. If you look at my Ruby code, you'll see that I avoid the hacks and monkey patches, stick to good OOD principles, keep my functions small and well documented, etc.
Marc
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Quote: My understanding is that it's only used for the front-end web page serving, and the actual problems are with the back office portion.
Out of curiosity do you have some sources on this? I would like to know why this happened.
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Kenneth Haugland wrote: Out of curiosity do you have some sources on this? I would like to know why this happened.
Gads, googling obamacare with "ruby" or "rails" is providing useful stuff anymore. There was a GitHub project that was supposed to be the open source side of the website, and there was some article I was reading a week ago or so that mentioned that it was the front end. Sorry, finding pertinent links now is failing my google-fu.
Marc
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Quote: Sorry, finding pertinent links now is failing my google-fu.
That was my problem too after some searches, and most of the comments here (and elsewhere) are speculation and general possible problems that people have see before. I would like to know what actually happen before I pass judgement on the project, but that seems like a tall order right now 
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Marc Clifton wrote: Sorry, finding pertinent links now is failing my google-fu.
Did anyone say "cover-up"? Seems somebody has been amazingly skilled at removing information related to the project ...
Marc Clifton wrote: I was reading a week ago or so that mentioned that it was the front end.
When Ruby on Rails is used as the front end - I guess we can make some assumptions as to the maturity of the back end ... and I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out that the average age of the team members is less than 30 ...
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Thanks Marc, I'll certainly have a look at the information 
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Marc Clifton wrote: keep my functions small and well documented, etc.
 Like a professional 
Marc Clifton wrote: hacks and monkey patches
Yes, it often seems that a certain class of, ehrm, developers could easily be replaced by Google search - it would be a huge improvement if they actually cared to read the blogs they are copying code from ...
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Espen Harlinn wrote: Yes, it often seems that a certain class of, ehrm, developers could easily be replaced by Google search - it would be a huge improvement if they actually cared to read the blogs they are copying code from ...
I'm working on a web-based database "spider-UI" and I'm still learning lots about CSS and Ruby, though it gets easier every day. I am amazed at how easy it is to find answers, especially on StackOverflow.
Of course, the interesting thing is, I never had this many questions doing .NET development. Now, I realize that I'm also asking bunches of CSS questions, but still...
Marc
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