Three 20-Year-Olds Make Their Own WORKING Obamacare Site – In Just Three Days

reply to post by grey580

Read the story.
They made a website that only gives out rates.

They did not have to build any of the backend interfaces to the myriad of government agencies that were required by the contract.

Why did the government agencies need to be involved in the first place? Did they not create the laws that the insurance companies had to abide by? Was this not sold to the American people as a "good product"? Well, if as Obama himself called it a "good product", then answer me this, "When did our government start selling us citizens a "product" that if we don't buy it we pay a fine?"?

Again, it brings up a point that someone else already made. Why do we have to give all of our private information to the government, versus the insurance companies that will be providing us with our so called health insurance? Kind of a trick question, when you consider that companies have to abide by laws, while the law makers DON'T!

Except their site doesn't seem to work either.

I entered my location and got zero plans available for just about every combination of variables I entered.

That obviously can't be right.

reply to post by grey580


Those aren't that hard at all. But in the simplest form, they could just display a link to the appropriate insurance company.

The entire thing is a giant ripoff and someone should go to jail for fraud. Imagine how many could have had insruance for 600 million dollars.

reply to post by PlatinumShatinum

Those aren't that hard at all. But in the simplest form, they could just display a link to the appropriate insurance company.

The entire thing is a giant ripoff and someone should go to jail for fraud. Imagine how many could have had insruance for 600 million dollars.

You make too much sense!!!

In a world where "LOGIC" is overruled by political theater, you Sir/Madam just might be a "terrorist"! /end sarcasm

You cannot polish a turd.

It's even more difficult when the turd is the size of manhattan. It means everyone gets to waste more time and more resources in order to find this out.

This turd is so huge, that you cannot step back far enough in order to evaluate it's size.

The turd is teeming with entitled maggots, a Trojan Turd, if you will.

Look, anything goes now. We have to pass the bill in order to see what's in it. That was the nadir of insanity. They are now running a contest to see who can best prove that we are absolutely begging for it up the bum.

Those news stories about cops climbing up a rectum during a routine traffic stop?

These stories are deliberately being flung in our faces. The best and brightest, and 'most fit to run things', are flaunting their power.

It's a pity that so many associate intelligence, with evil.

One day they will lose control.

As much as they deserve their own list keeping turrets being swung 'round in their own faces, I am uncertain if I wish for this to occur, in my time.

Because half of humanity seems to believe that we must kill the evil rich.

But it's not about money or property. It's about control.

This means that most of you idiots believe that if you could just appropriate someone else's money, that you'd be happy. It means there is nothing spiritual in you. It means a bad earthly trip with hollow unhappy zombies who only get off on their status, in man's eye.

It means that even if the G were removed from place, we are left with a population who thinks exactly like them.

That is the goal of democracy, after all. The smartest, and most fit 'to run things' love that word.

They tell you about 'what we all want' 24-7, using the media they kontrol.

If you taped my eyelids open and made me watch CNN, I'd implode. It is pure evil. If you are listening, your spirit will either die, or rebel against it~the sentences spoken by Anderson Cooper. The channels, all of them, are the same. But I only watch hardcore. CNN has no holds barred. The rest are klowns.

You could steal a mountain of money, and I guarantee you there is not a moment of joy in it.

That mountain of money will not buy one millisecond of 'God'.

# 80

Web design code (html) is literally the easiest programming language to learn

Pretty liberal with the term programming language.

All this focus on the website is a distraction from the heart of what Obamacare is doing - reaching its tentacles into healthcare and ensnaring as many people as it can. If we're past the point of debating this core issue then it's over...

...before it's done. They got us.

reply to post by seeker1963


Cant the government sue them for a full refund and get the taxpayers money back ?

reply to post by desertguy

Cant the government sue them for a full refund and get the taxpayers money back ?

They probably could, but since this debacle happened they actually spent MORE money on a contract to have this same company do more work!!

Crony Capitalism at it's finest! Not to mention criminal activity against the tax payers whom fund their shady activities.

Vortiki
I took computer science for a completer years ago in high school.

I can tell you with 100% certainty that no competent student would have graduated their website design class without being able to create such a website.

Web design code (html) is literally the easiest programming language to learn. So easy, in fact, most teenage kids these days know enough html to successfully edit their own facebook, myspace, whatever.

The fact that someone took hundreds of millions of dollars to do what a few teenagers could have done in a couple days with a 24 pack of Mt Dew is nothing short of disgusting. These people should be taken to prison for fraud.

Do you know CSS? XPath, XSLT, JSON and other tricks for Ajax? ASP.Net? C#? Javascript? Jquery? SQL? What RDBMs do you work with (MySQL, Oracle, MSSQL, PostgreSQL)? NoSQL? BizTalk? Servlets? JSP? PHP? Or do you just do work in something like Dreamweaver? How about BASH scripting? Working in a *nix environment? There is a lot more that went into the ACA website than what the three guys did over a weekend codejam. They made a front-end that queries the ACA backend. The complexity of the full site comes in the form of making sure all the systems can talk to each other and track all the state changes.

If you don't know what BizTalk is, you can't even hope to understand the complexity that gets involved with making lots of disparate disconnected systems communicate. This doesn't mean the ACA website couldn't have been better, not by a long-shot (and no I didn't have any involvement with it), but it's a little annoying hearing people talk about things that are of a technical nature when they really don't know what goes into an operation like Amazon, EBay, or even a midlevel website like ATS.

That said it's nice to see the guys simplified the process to query for different plans by zip. That should have been a no-brainer for the launch. Then again stupidly obvious things get missed all the time with any big project. That's why it's always iteration, iteration, iteration...

This does not surprise me at all. First and foremost, many folks in DC have z e r o experience. Add that to the ineptitude of decision makers. I'm sure any average computer guy/gal can have a site up in a matter of days. I also wonder if the computer faux pas is a false front. With all the collection of data by the NSA, they don't need us to fill anything out. They already have what they need.

This isn't really the same functionality. Not to mention that you already have to signup at healthcare.gov before moving forward onto their site. What they did was built a website that aggregates health insurance plans based on zip code. From the little bit i've looked into their site they don't even pull plans from states that have their own exchanges setup.

This is like comparing a ferrari to a power wheels.

reply to post by seeker1963


I thought of doing a satire news piece on something like this, but it seemed too easy. But reading a few posts above me shows that they really didn't build anything workable at all which is related to the Affordable Care Act

Xtraeme

Vortiki
I took computer science for a completer years ago in high school.

I can tell you with 100% certainty that no competent student would have graduated their website design class without being able to create such a website.

Web design code (html) is literally the easiest programming language to learn. So easy, in fact, most teenage kids these days know enough html to successfully edit their own facebook, myspace, whatever.

The fact that someone took hundreds of millions of dollars to do what a few teenagers could have done in a couple days with a 24 pack of Mt Dew is nothing short of disgusting. These people should be taken to prison for fraud.

Do you know CSS? XPath, XSLT, JSON and other tricks for Ajax? ASP.Net? C#? Javascript? Jquery? SQL? What RDBMs do you work with (MySQL, Oracle, MSSQL, PostgresSQL)? NoSQL? BizTalk? Servlets? JSP? PHP? Or do you just do work in something like Dreamweaver? How about BASH scripting? Working in a *nix environment? There is a lot more that went into the ACA website than what the three guys did over a weekend codejam. They made a front-end that queries the ACA backend. The complexity of the full site comes in the form of making sure all the systems can talk to each other and track all the state changes. If you don't know what BizTalk is, you can't even hope to understand the complexity that gets involved with making lots of disparate disconnected systems communicate. This doesn't mean the ACA website couldn't have been better, not by a long-shot (and no I didn't have any involvement with it), but it's a little annoying hearing people talk about things that are of a technical nature when they really don't know what goes into an operation like Amazon, EBay, or even a midlevel website like ATS.

edit on 2013-11-12 by Xtraeme because: (no reason given)

SELECT * FROM public.misunderstandings WHERE stupid >= '100';

Over 9000 results found.

reply to post by seeker1963


Do you "really" believe that creating the site & software for a new national healthcare program is so easy that three 20 yr. olds can do it in three days? Really?

Can their software handle millions of simultaneous hits?

Does their software provide adequate security to protect our personal information?

Is their software designed to integrate smoothly with the other government systems and programs in departments such as the I.R.S., Social Security, Medicare and/or Medicaid?

Is it designed to integrate with the varying State run programs already in place across this nation?

Does their software have the ability to verify information provided by applicants? (Things like income, disability, employment status, etc...)

And last but not least, is their software capable of doing all these things in enough different languages to meet the basic needs of those applying for coverage?

Well I don't know about you, but I seriously doubt it. The undertaking is, in itself, a monumental task that will need tweaking for quite some time and I really wouldn't expect anyone to get it right on the first go around.

IMO, the biggest single problem facing the ACA is the fact that we allowed the private, (for profit) healthcare insurance providers to remain in the business of providing "basic" healthcare coverage at all.

I'm confident that we should have and eventually will, convert the program into a truly universal, single-payer system that provides basic healthcare coverage to "everyone" and relegate the private, for-profit, insurers to providing supplemental coverages for those who need and/or desire them.

But it's gonna take some time and so long as the GOP is intent to obstruct instead of construct, there's no telling how long.

Evil_Santa

SELECT * FROM public.misunderstandings WHERE stupid >= '100';

Over 9000 results found.

I haven't laughed that hard in a long time. It's good to know a few people on ATS understand how absurdly easy and common SQL injection attacks are. A little messed up cached data ain't gonna reveal the CIA's dirty secrets. I swear trying to explain what sanitizing input is and, worse how to do it, is like pulling teeth.

Xtraeme

Vortiki
I took computer science for a completer years ago in high school.

I can tell you with 100% certainty that no competent student would have graduated their website design class without being able to create such a website.

Web design code (html) is literally the easiest programming language to learn. So easy, in fact, most teenage kids these days know enough html to successfully edit their own facebook, myspace, whatever.

The fact that someone took hundreds of millions of dollars to do what a few teenagers could have done in a couple days with a 24 pack of Mt Dew is nothing short of disgusting. These people should be taken to prison for fraud.

Do you know CSS? XPath, XSLT, JSON and other tricks for Ajax? ASP.Net? C#? Javascript? Jquery? SQL? What RDBMs do you work with (MySQL, Oracle, MSSQL, PostgreSQL)? NoSQL? BizTalk? Servlets? JSP? PHP? Or do you just do work in something like Dreamweaver? How about BASH scripting? Working in a *nix environment? There is a lot more that went into the ACA website than what the three guys did over a weekend codejam. They made a front-end that queries the ACA backend. The complexity of the full site comes in the form of making sure all the systems can talk to each other and track all the state changes.

If you don't know what BizTalk is, you can't even hope to understand the complexity that gets involved with making lots of disparate disconnected systems communicate. This doesn't mean the ACA website couldn't have been better, not by a long-shot (and no I didn't have any involvement with it), but it's a little annoying hearing people talk about things that are of a technical nature when they really don't know what goes into an operation like Amazon, EBay, or even a midlevel website like ATS.

That said it's nice to see the guys simplified the process to query for different plans by zip. That should have been a no-brainer for the launch. Then again stupidly obvious things get missed all the time with any big project. That's why it's always iteration, iteration, iteration...

I couldn't agree with you more!

I don't know my ass from a hole in the ground when it comes to computer programming and even a dumb-ass like me knows that the required software will have to be unbelievably complicated in order to accomplish the initiation of the ACA.

I would have given you ten stars for your post if I were allowed.

reply to post by Flatfish

Do you "really" believe that creating the site & software for a new national healthcare program is so easy that three 20 yr. olds can do it in three days? Really?

Yep! Especially when I see the tax payer money that was just tossed into the salad.........

Do you think for a second that the video game companies put as much money into producing those beautiful panoramas of eye candy that we all enjoy playing spend as much money as our wonderful loving parents we call our government wasted on a website that was designed for nothing more than exchanging information????

Put down your pom poms and shed your blind partisanship!

Here is a comparison of other sites compared to ACA (which only server 36 states).
The end result is the taxpayers handed out 500 million dollars and the thing doesn't work.

"Facebook, which received its first investment in June 2004, operated for a full six years before surpassing the $500 million mark in June 2010. Twitter, created in 2006, managed to get by with only $360.17 million in total funding until a $400 million boost in 2011. Instagram ginned up just $57.5 million in funding before Facebook bought it for (a staggering) $1 billion last year. And LinkedIn and Spotify, meanwhile, have only raised, respectively, $200 million and $288 million."

www.digitaltrends.com...

reply to post by seeker1963


Seeker I worked in the game industry on big games. Games like Age of Empires 3, Rise of Legends, games over at Electronic Arts, on Xbox Live Anywhere (making it not just using it), and the list goes on. The cost isn't even close. The last game I worked on even with all the licensing crap we had to deal with at New Line Cinema and with the Tolkien Estate, even excluding that we still were just in the ~20-30 million dollar range. Comparing a video game (which is really just smoke and mirrors) to a huge site like Amazon or what they're doing with the ACA. You just can't put them in the same category. They're completely different beasts.