Warp wrote:
>   Of course getting to this kind of development must be rather hard and
> expensive (at least at first). It also requires a kind of mentality and
> expertise that most project leaders just don't have.

I think it's probably similar for a lot of safety-critical code.

The thing about NASA is they have safety-critical code, extremely bad press 
when it fails, and a software budget dwarfed by everything else they do. 
When the concern doesn't include how much it costs or how long it takes, 
it's a whole bunch easier to make perfect code.

Having the same development platform for 35 years can also help, as does 
having every bit of specs about how absolutely everything works. And in all 
honesty, the programs aren't all that big. How many bugs have you written 
because you're using some infrastructure code that isn't documented 
correctly and completely?

Which is not to say they're not awesome. I'm just saying they're solving a 
different problem than 3DRealms was trying to solve. :-)

http://www.atarimagazines.com/compute/issue132/92_Space_shuttle_techno.php

http://www.popsci.com/node/31716


-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "We'd like you to back-port all the changes in 2.0
    back to version 1.0."
   "We've done that already. We call it 2.0."

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