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Comment by TheSoftwareGuy | Hacker News Reader

Java seems like a good choice for the IRS. There are legions and legions of programmers well versed in Java, since its among the most commonly used programming languages to introduce programming at universities. This means the IRS should be able to focus its hiring on "People who know tax law and can use Java" instead of "Java experts that know enough tax law to be dangerous".

Its not the flashiest language, but I think its the right choice for them.

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What makes you think the developers have to "know tax law"?

It might be a peripheral plus for an applicant, but it's more important they are a competent programmer.

"Tax law" changes constantly - you truly cannot reasonably expect a developer to "know tax law" and be a competent programmer.

"Know tax law" in the context of a software developer I would interpret as understanding the core concepts and terminology involved in tax law, not knowing all the intricacies involved in every single piece of tax law. They need to be able to understand the specific pieces of tax law that they are working on with the help of an actual expert without too much friction; they don't have to be actual experts on tax law.

by "know tax law", I'd assume they mean the same thing as know react - that is, they have experience doing it previously.

Seems unlikely that they can hire many cross functional tax-law-programmers. You integrate teams so there are experts on both.

Maybe, but my line of thinking is that it could be easier and better to teach tax law specialists a little bit of Java, than the other way around

I don’t know how much validation the code does, but every single number in your tax forms is related to another by some statement in the law, and these change constantly. Validating them means codifying every single rule.

Germany figured this out a while ago and built a rule engine with GUI and small DSL where the lawyers can input tax rules to the database - meaning better code and you can emit for any platform. It’s called ElsterRules (Elster is the online tax filing program) and runs even in your browser... I wonder if there’s something similar in other countries.

Its not the flashiest language so I think its the right choice for them.

FTFY

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