USAF feels Oleg's pain

[baronWastelan]

Originally Posted by dduff442

From Mariner 1 via Ariane 5 to the SAAB Gripen prototype, the history of software in aviation is dismal. If a civil engineer built a bridge that collapsed, he'd be ruined. A software engineer builds his bridge again and again - hundreds of times - and when it finally stands up on its own there's a big party.

Thankfully physical modelling like Il-2/SoW has a better record than most, but many large software projects exhibit not just a lack of competence but a lack of understanding of the most basic precepts of engineering. It's not just that many big IT projects end up non-functional, they start out with designs that couldn't function in the first place. Computer Science grads need to be taught the difference between provable and non-provable designs and how to test ideas.

dduff

That's quite funny, but is it a fair comparison? People have been been building bridges for 1000's of years, and they all do practically the same thing. A single piece of software can do 100's of different things, many of them that have never been done before.