from Hacker News

Jed Wagner on Being the Sole Maintainer of the Veterans Appeals System

by sien on 3/13/25, 7:22 AM with 2 comments

• by sien on 3/13/25, 7:23 AM

  This is a remarkable interview with someone who maintains one of those systems that has been in production for decades.

  Many older people will have seen something similar.

  But I've never read an interview like this.

• by rightbyte on 3/13/25, 9:26 AM

  A programmer working year after year directly with the beurocrats and users of the beurocracy.

  What an utopian dream compared to best practices today.

  More software projects should be like this. It is probably about 10-100 times as efficient from the programmer perspective and ends up with a more usuable product.

  Baby sitting working software is the most value add a programmer can do in my view.