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The Dysfunctional Trillion-Dollar U.S. Fighter-Jet Program

nytimes.com

1–10 of 79 posts

Re: The Dysfunctional Trillion-Dollar U.S. Fighter-Jet Program

#2
> One solution favored by Winter during his recent tenure was so-called agile software development. His vision for “continuous capability development and delivery” resembles DevOps, a popular method in the private sector for quickly testing and evaluating features for new products. Coders generate software upgrades or patches in a matter of days or weeks, pass them along to users to test and then push out the update more widely if the changes are successful.

Are the rest of the details of the article, about domains I don't personally understand, equally subtly inaccurate and misleading?

Re: The Dysfunctional Trillion-Dollar U.S. Fighter-Jet Program

#3

> One solution favored by Winter during his recent tenure was so-called agile software development. His vision for “continuous capability development and delivery” resembles DevOps, a popular method in the private sector for quickly testing and evaluating features for new products. Coders generate software upgrades or patches in a matter of days or weeks, pass them along to users to test and then push out the update…

Not just in this, but in virtually every newspiece you’ll run across. This can be difficult to remember, but is well worth doing.

Re: The Dysfunctional Trillion-Dollar U.S. Fighter-Jet Program

#4

> One solution favored by Winter during his recent tenure was so-called agile software development. His vision for “continuous capability development and delivery” resembles DevOps, a popular method in the private sector for quickly testing and evaluating features for new products. Coders generate software upgrades or patches in a matter of days or weeks, pass them along to users to test and then push out the update…

The current title I'm seeing is "Inside America’s Dysfunctional Trillion-Dollar Fighter-Jet Program" which seems misleading as well; it's more of a history of press releases. Doesn't look like they interviewed anyone actually working on it aside from the fellow in charge if that.

Re: The Dysfunctional Trillion-Dollar U.S. Fighter-Jet Program

#5

> One solution favored by Winter during his recent tenure was so-called agile software development. His vision for “continuous capability development and delivery” resembles DevOps, a popular method in the private sector for quickly testing and evaluating features for new products. Coders generate software upgrades or patches in a matter of days or weeks, pass them along to users to test and then push out the update…

This is sometimes called the Gell-Mann amnesia effect.

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-ge...

Re: The Dysfunctional Trillion-Dollar U.S. Fighter-Jet Program

#6

> One solution favored by Winter during his recent tenure was so-called agile software development. His vision for “continuous capability development and delivery” resembles DevOps, a popular method in the private sector for quickly testing and evaluating features for new products. Coders generate software upgrades or patches in a matter of days or weeks, pass them along to users to test and then push out the update…

Like the internets, the news is largely composed of views by people who are typically not experts in the subject domain.

A tenet of journalism is that professional practices can provide some level of truth regardless of expertise.

Note that this article will one day be cited in a DevOps wiki page by a well meaning writer far abstracted from 2019 HN. That’s the way most history is written.

Re: The Dysfunctional Trillion-Dollar U.S. Fighter-Jet Program

#7
post #4

> One solution favored by Winter during his recent tenure was so-called agile software development. His vision for “continuous capability development and delivery” resembles DevOps, a popular method in the private sector for quickly testing and evaluating features for new products. Coders generate software upgrades or patches in a matter of days or weeks, pass them along to users to test and then push out the update…

The current title I'm seeing is "Inside America’s Dysfunctional Trillion-Dollar Fighter-Jet Program" which seems misleading as well; it's more of a history of press releases. Doesn't look like they interviewed anyone actually working on it aside from the fellow in charge if that.

How does such a poorly researched article get published in the NYT? My personal blog is better researched than this.

Re: The Dysfunctional Trillion-Dollar U.S. Fighter-Jet Program

#8
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current title I'm seeing is "Inside America’s Dysfunctional Trillion-Dollar Fighter-Jet Program" which seems misleading as well; it's more of a history of press releases. Doesn't look like they interviewed anyone actually working on it aside from the fellow in charge if that.

How does such a poorly researched article get published in the NYT? My personal blog is better researched than this.

If you hit Publish on your personal blog three days later than originally planned, you’re unlikely to be fired over it.

Re: The Dysfunctional Trillion-Dollar U.S. Fighter-Jet Program

#9

> One solution favored by Winter during his recent tenure was so-called agile software development. His vision for “continuous capability development and delivery” resembles DevOps, a popular method in the private sector for quickly testing and evaluating features for new products. Coders generate software upgrades or patches in a matter of days or weeks, pass them along to users to test and then push out the update…

Is it really that bad for a general readership? I'd like to see automated testing in there. And maybe incrementally improving products. But to someone who doesn't know and doesn't care about the details of software development, it seems to capture the basic gist.

Re: The Dysfunctional Trillion-Dollar U.S. Fighter-Jet Program

#10
I wonder if there's a system where the contractors apart of the program, which according to the news reports are so above budget / behind schedule, could submit post mortems to whichever agency audits this program. What hurdles they wish they knew going in.

Similar to this: https://mozyrko.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/77-failed-startu...

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