6 ms·

Link bait title. I had my hopes up for something juicy only to find out something I already knew... government employees build crappy software.

• timf 17y ago
  > government employees build crappy software That is quite the generalization. Out of the same national lab comes MPICH for example which is installed on nearly every large supercomputer that needs a message passing library. It's very robust, portable, performant, and popular. http://www.mcs.anl.gov/research/projects/mpich2/ http://www.mcs.anl.gov/research/projects/mpich2/ National labs are far more like normal companies than you might imagine. The software efforts are done by small teams that vary in their aims, funding, talent, competitional pressure, and enthusiasm. Pretty much like any other software environment... Take a look at the error rates discussed in this story about NASA and I don't know how you could generalize that "government employees build crappy software": http://www.fastcompany.com/node/28121/print http://www.fastcompany.com/node/28121/print