>>>>>>>And stress, I'm sure. They literally do make life and death decisions. If my program has a bug in it, nobody dies from it.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Then you've never worked in the real-time, process control world.
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>I know there are applications like that out there. I was speaking from personal experience. There probably aren't many of us who do database apps who work on software that can kill you.
>>>>
>>>>I'm just glad that I don't do that anymore. The pressure can be crushing.
>>>
>>>Was the pay justifying the stress? (This is probably a stupid question but still I'd like to have your point of view)
>>
>>Not hardly. But since I was young and foolish, it seemed pretty decent. I'd like to think I've since gotten wiser. <g>
>
>This has just made me think (I know - unusual). I used to work for a simulator company, Singer Link-Miles (sister co to Link in Binghampton NY). Now one of the very points of simulators is that people can use them to make "flying" mistakes that don't prove fatal. So in a sense, any s/w I wrote for them was not life-critical. But OTOH there's the possibility that erroneous s/w could lead the pilot into a false sense of security, so that in the real world he would crash if he did something that the sim s/w forgave him for.

True enough. Suppose your simulator didn't reflect some reaction to the event that actually occurs in the real thing? They pilot may react entirely differently to the event because of the unexpected or different stimuli. You just can't win, so I've determined it's not in my best interests to even play those "games" anymore.