Saturday, October 12, 2013

Hats Off to the Obamacare Website Programmers

You may think I am about to tear into the programmers for the Obamacare websites or make fun of them. You may think this post will be some tongue-in-cheek sarcasm. But it is not.

Everyone wonders how after three years that the website launch for signing up for Obamacare could fail. It is simple. The programmers did not have three years. In fact, how long did they have?

Just this summer I remember the talk shows having discussions about states in which it was not still decided if they would open up a health care exchange or the federal government would. This summer that happened. No one was sure whom would be responsible.

This means not a single line of code could have been written yet. Only two or three months maybe for some sites to program and get ready for October first and millions of users. Unless you are a programmer you might not know what an insane request that is.

In these past three years Obamacare has been coming into shape and facing legal challenges. Obama himself has delayed parts of the legislation in a manner that is unconstitutional. How the whole system works has been free form regardless of the law. No one knows what it will look like in the end.

It is still changing.

So I cannot stand by and let people make fun of the programmers. They are at the mercy of the blowing winds of regulations. It is like herding cats. How can the programmers make a finished product for a system with changing rules?

You can not stress test a system if it is not finished. Obamacare is under an ever changing set of rules. We still don't know what it will all come down to.

How do you program that?

Herding cats, man. Herding cats.

You don't want to program that.

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