Computer says no

http://www.economist.com/node/16646044?story_id=16646044

by edw519 • 16 years ago

69 44 16 years ago

" . . . isn’t Vernon Hill, one of the bank’s founders, tempted to build an IT system of his own? I hate programmers, replies this dyed-in-the-wool entrepreneur. They only cause trouble."

Spoken like someone who's been there on a few projects.

arethuza• 16 years ago

A banker accusing programmers of causing trouble??

nkassis2• 16 years ago

well to be fair, the programmers were part of the latest wave of problems.

aswanson2• 16 years ago

I'd pay exorbitant hidden fees to see the results of Mr. Hill's efforts.

InclinedPlane3• 16 years ago

Here's the problem: to non-programmers programming is magic. How does a non-programmer hire a programmer? How do they manage a programming project?

The answer tends to be that they don't, they get lucky or they get unlucky. They don't have any protections from getting taken to the cleaners. From spending $10 million on a VBA + Access abomination that's far more trouble than it's worth. But they may be so unsophisticated when it comes to software that they don't know they've been taken for a ride until years later.

Compare that to, say, construction of a new bank building. A bank president knows that if they spend $X million they'll get a new building, with high probability. There may be some problems along the way but they for sure won't end up spending $X million on nothing, or on a cardboard box with a "BANK" sign written in crayon on the side. It's understandable that they might be a bit leery of dipping their feet in the IT waters.

MrRage• 16 years ago

I agree with all you said, but why hate programmers? That just seems a bit personally offending. Why not instead hate new software projects?

rbanffy• 16 years ago

Loved the reference to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZAoMv_QnAU

swedegeek• 16 years ago

Haha. The title is exactly why I checked out the link. It was indeed about British banks. Here's the 6s version of the reference...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOdjCb4LwQY

Good stuff.

rick_2047• 16 years ago

This really creeps me out you know. Money has a first person ontology. Paper, metal, gold or bits are money because we believe its money. But if the reported numbers for the bank’s exposure were regularly billions of dollars adrift of reality then now can I believe that what I have is not going to disappear in a glitch or is created because of a glitch.

Disclaimer:I am not an economist nor do I earn anything right now. So if this is an uneducated or miss educated comment please fill free to give references.

jacquesm3• 16 years ago

It's really no surprise. If a bank is processing data all the time in various, non-connected systems then the only way to know the actual state is to stop accepting input and to let all processes synchronize to the point where you can total things up. Anything else is going to almost certainly miss a bunch of stuff that is in the midst of being updated on one system, but not yet available on another, or counted double.

shrikant2• 16 years ago

This is largely why 'real-time business intelligence' in banking is a pipe dream, and currently, any vendor who claims to do this is a snake-oil salesman.

adw• 16 years ago

Classic example: the entire clearing system is eventually consistent.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clearing_(finance)

boredguy8• 16 years ago

Shared belief that large tangible objects have value is not fundamentally different from shared belief that small bits in a system have value. Shared agreement is what keeps the whole thing going.

pragmatic2• 16 years ago

Is it me or doesn't this make any sense?

But what really sets Metro Bank apart is its state-of-the-art IT system.

Then at the end:

With such grand designs, isn’t Vernon Hill, one of the bank’s founders, tempted to build an IT system of his own? “I hate programmers,” replies this dyed-in-the-wool entrepreneur. “They only cause trouble.”

Didn't they already build a state of the art IT system?

jacquesm3• 16 years ago

Maybe they outsourced the building of it?

shrikant2• 16 years ago

They did. Pretty much all of it.

gaius3• 16 years ago

Good, cheap, fast, pick any two.

I can guess which two this guy chose every time.

pragmatic2• 16 years ago

Bonus: http://www.economist.com/comment/604403#comment-604403

One of the best explanations between community banks and the "big" banks.

I worked for a company that is now part of Fiserv.

mseebach2• 16 years ago

The banks website seems to be at https://www.metrobankonline.co.uk/ .. but Chrome says the SSL certificate is signed by an unknown authority, who claims to be VeriSign.

dchest• 16 years ago

Probably, Chrome's (dev version?) bug.

studer• 16 years ago

Works for me, with current Chrome dev (6.0.472.25). Which version do you have?

mseebach2• 16 years ago

Probably... I've got 5.0.375.125 beta. It's not new, but it's at least from this year.

I'd expect VeriSign to be on top of this.

agl2• 16 years ago

The server is misconfigured: it's missing intermediate certificates in its chain. Chrome 6.x should be able to work around this on all platforms at the cost of making the site slower.

Additionally, the server is open to prefix attacks.

For a bank, that's a pretty miserable state of affairs.

thwarted• 16 years ago

Chrome 6.x should be able to work around this on all platforms at the cost of making the site slower.

This sounds, uh, weird. Got a link to more information? I'd like to see the rationale for having the browser subvert misconfigured servers; this would seem to undermine the already precarious SSL state we're in.

Marticus• 16 years ago

Completely agreed - as a former software developer for banks, they really don't like working on their own stuff - they typically buy it off the shelf, and don't ever think to do a hardware overhaul.

But then again, while working in the industry, there seems to also be a HUGE disconnect between banks' perception of technology and the part it actually plays. Chase seems to be getting into a good position as a result of closing that gap (pictures of checks deposited to your acct via phone).

thinkcomp• 16 years ago

Most banks in the U.S. outsource their IT to Fiserv or FIS these days.

nkassis2• 16 years ago

I like how old mainframe apps are always blamed in these articles. These apps written ages ago are in my view quite incredible. How many of us have written software that will be used 30 years from now?

Every time I hear about great rewrites of mainframe application (Air control fiasco of a few years ago) I just am amazed at what the original programmers managed to build which is still in use.

Rewriting that stuff means rewriting all the business logic embedded in those applications. I expect that most of the time, new apps must follow the exact flow the old apps had or else the employees using it won't like it. I've seen this first hand, were talking about buttons being placed exactly the same way.

Even if these banks modernized, the business processes would stay the same.

cema• 16 years ago

  How many of us have written software 
  that will be used 30 years from now?

We may not always know that.

clistctrl• 16 years ago

god i hope some of the crap i wrote when I was just starting dies in a pit of flames. To see it live for 30 years would be a nightmare spanning generations.

InclinedPlane3• 16 years ago

I'll pick one nit in this: rewrite fiascos aren't necessarily a testament to the timeless talent and genius of the original programmers.

Rather, they are a testament to the difficulties of replacing running software and the problems of managing any software project.

The original software was written in an older age for older hardware, it thus must have much simpler functionality. Because the ability to build larger systems may not have existed back then, and the ability of the hardware to cope with anything beyond the basic functionality was perhaps minimal at best. Given those requirements the devs banged out a simple system which then sat in constant use for ages (the best form of testing) and was patched up over time.

Now along comes a big, well funded project to replace the aging old system. Of course mountains of new requirements get piled onto it (because computers are so much faster and our programming tools are so much more capable). And then the project goes over budget and over schedule, the death march eventually produces a barely functional replacement and of course it's full of bugs because they cut corners rushing to get the thing shipped and nobody seemed to appreciate the enormity of the testing and defect removal needs for a new more complex system to match the robustness of a system that has had literally decades of real-world testing to facilitate defect removal.

But note that this sort of trend applies regardless of the talent of the original developers. Even if it took 5 years for that original system, simple as it is, to become robust it'll still look like a work of genius compared to attempted re-writes that fall victim to all the problems listed above.

Revisor• 16 years ago

Without appropriate design, yesterday's success is tomorrow's straightjacket, since today's great applications are tomorrow's legacy systems.

Bill Buxton in Sketching User Experiences, page 209

vishaldpatel• 16 years ago

Relavent Little Britain sketch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZAoMv_QnAU&feature=relat...

dsspence• 16 years ago

"Philip OCarroll wrote: Jul 23rd 2010 12:21 GMT

I hate bankers - they only cause trouble.

e.g. financial catastrophe, global depression"

Computer says no

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