Chuck Todd, Newly Minted Web Guru: “Adding a Server Would Fix It in a Heartbeat!”
It’s clear that the launch of healthcare.gov has not gone well, but one positive thing has come out of it: the hilarious spectacle of White House reporters who suddenly turn into web programming gurus.
For example, here’s MSNBC’s Chuck Todd, helpfully offering his professional opinion that if extreme traffic is really to blame for the problems, all they have to do is “add a server” and everything will be fixed “in a heartbeat.”
This is me, shaking my head.
And then, to make the media’s tech fail even more ridiculous, we have the New York Times making the absolutely absurd claim that the healthcare.gov web application contains 500 million lines of code: Contractors See Weeks of Work on Health Site.
According to one specialist, the Web site contains about 500 million lines of software code. By comparison, a large bank’s computer system is typically about one-fifth that size.
I did a double take when I read this paragraph. For comparison, the entire Windows 7 operating system contains about 50 million lines of code. The ACA website is a government project so there’s undoubtedly some middleware bloat involved, but half a billion lines of code is simply an absurd estimate. That’s either a typo, or the Times’ “specialist” is playing a prank on them.
