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Comment by b800h | Hacker News Reader

What is infuriating about this is that this should be a solved optimisation problem, but it has probably been outsourced on the cheap to some bog-standard web dev team who have tried to figure it out from first principles. It's a bit like trying to roll your own security.

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What I don't get is why it would be outsourced at all. Run a team that manages the entire SDLC. If they mess it up, they are maintaining it and have a reason to solve the problem.

How did people manage to convince government that software is this one-time thing you just pay for and then it works forever?

To be fair some nations do have their software development teams. Italy has Sogei which is fully controlled by the Ministry of Economics. They had a reputation for developing crappy software but I heard they are getting better

PS: they were not involved in the development of this algorithm

Smals to Belgium is pretty much what Sogei is to Italy. A government-controlled IT sweatshop.

It's a lot easier to clear capital expenditure than revenue expense.

Optimization is solved in the sense we have engines for it, but precisely defining the problem to be solved is not trivial, and the error described here could have been made within an established solver with the wrong specification.

Nah this is a government contract. It was definitely done by a consultancy for big money and zero effort and no accountability.

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