are programmers "failures"?

[Don Shepherd]

(04-30-2019 10:08 PM)Leviset Wrote:  I also remember in the 90s discussions about the Air Traffic Control Systems at Heathrow & Gatwick which used software & hardware in excess of 20 years old and that nobody wanted to take on replacing those systems (I seem to remember that the software ran on either Sperry/Univac or Unisys Mainframes?).
I know we have some pilots on this Forum but do we have anyone who has worked on replacing vintage ATC software & hardware - I’m assuming by now the software/hardware has been updated and no longer running on valves & Cobol?

Back in the 1990's I was a manager of a group of testers charged with testing a new air traffic control system for the US, called AAS (Advanced Automation System). This included new hardware and software. The legacy IBM 9020 hardware (based on IBM 360 mainframes) and JOVIAL software was being replaced by Ada software running on IBM RISC/6000 systems. After about 3 or 4 years of cost overruns and slipped schedules the project was cancelled. Getting Ada code to work turned out to be a tough nut to crack, but I suspect that a bigger problem was that the FAA essentially wanted a single ATC system to run in both Enroute Centers and terminal control centers, but neither the enroute people nor the terminal people wanted that because they knew that the requirements for these two types of facilities were very different. I moved onto a different project and lost track of what was happening with ATC systems but I do know that new hardware and software was eventually built and installed in both enroute and terminal facilities, and I would assume that the system is safer and more reliable today than if those legacy systems were still around.