Tom,

>We spent more money and did not keep it simple. Who got to the Moon and back? It was a matter of money, priorities, pride and technology - not necessarily in that order! :) By the way I worked on the Apollo and LEM projects.

Very nice to know that, think you had a great time there! BTW isn't today the aniversary of the creation of NASA (july 29, 1958)?

Anyway, there is no need to be an astronaut to understand my point here, and you as an inteligent and refined guy couldn't miss it :) We are talking about software creation, and the idea of my message is to call people's attention to what we say in Brazil: "to kill a bird with a cannon shot", there will be no way you will loose it! Of course the tree where the bird was will go along with it and, probably, a crater will be left in there!

So, my point is: not all folks (in all countries) have the money US folks have and can waste, so can't afford such expensive solutions, OTOH creative work should be encouraged and enforced, IMHO. Big software companies push you to adhere to their new technologies, sometimes even before they are released (actually they don't push you, but the feeling of "staying behind the others" is that pushes you - somewhat like "fashion" technology). The common sense is not to find solutions to (known) problems, but instead to create new problems to justify their new technologies, and to sell them and make big money (you can find some stuff that think supports what I'm saying in MicrosoftBandWagon, something more can also be found in The Rising Complexity of Software Development).

I can guess that folks where you've worked for NASA, made fantastic computing work, not with fancy visual sh*, but probably with old FORTRAN, where what counts is creative work, inteligence, method, knowledge of algorithms and math (things that seem to be scarse these days, and need to be balanced with huge amounts of "technology"). But, even using "poor" computational technology, they helped to send guys to the moon! What we see today is people trying to copy a file from one place to another using web services, just to use this "new technology".

Congratulations to you and to all your fellows that could help make the US space dream come true!

Fernando