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NASA still maintains some of the Voyager spacecraft code from the 70s era

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Re: NASA still maintains some of the Voyager spacecraft code from the 70s era

#21

Post by sublinear »

tamimio wrote: post #12
rbanffy wrote: post #2

> younger engineers often have the capability but not the inclination Kids these days... Why would someone in their right mind think working on the Voyager project could damage their careers? You can work on new and fancy tools all you want to improve supporting tools, and it's still one of the coolest space missions active. Plus, it has a real end - at some point, support will be further reduced and the person will…

Because software development back in the day wasn’t like how it’s now now, the charade so called software development now is a clown show: scrum, daily stand ups, open office style, tickets, tons of ci/cd BS, and of course, the wrangler aka PM and all politics involved, none of this existed like the cult it is now, I only had one experience in such environment and despite the effort I had to ask for some common sense…

> none of this existed like the cult it is now

So you'd prefer for all this project management drama and power struggle to be invisible?

All this scaffolding is not a cult. It exists to democratize the process. Your personal comfort is irrelevant to the results.

Re: NASA still maintains some of the Voyager spacecraft code from the 70s era

#22

Post by PurpleRamen »

rbanffy wrote: post #2

> younger engineers often have the capability but not the inclination Kids these days... Why would someone in their right mind think working on the Voyager project could damage their careers? You can work on new and fancy tools all you want to improve supporting tools, and it's still one of the coolest space missions active. Plus, it has a real end - at some point, support will be further reduced and the person will…

> Kids these days... Why would someone in their right mind think working on the Voyager project could damage their careers?

It's an isolated legacy-project with no future. Mostly everything you learn for it will be only useful for this specific project, so all time to invest there is time to can't invest into something useful. Sure, there are probably some parts to learn from this too, but It's less than what your competitors will learn on their fancy modern projects.

> You can work on new and fancy tools all you want to improve supporting tools

Voyager is in maintenance, there is no big innovation or big progress to be made there. It's just work to hold the line as long as possible. And I guess nobody want's to be the one killing it because of a poor attempt to innovate something.

Re: NASA still maintains some of the Voyager spacecraft code from the 70s era

#23

Post by PurpleRamen »

lexicality wrote: post #5
bombcar wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even all that to the side, it lets you say you worked on the Voyager project!

If I'm reviewing CVs and I see that you worked at NASA on the Voyager code, you're getting an interview just so I can ask about it. I wouldn't normally approve of CV driven development, but for this?!

But would you give them a job? Would they even match the requirements?

Re: NASA still maintains some of the Voyager spacecraft code from the 70s era

#24

Post by birdsongs »

RagnarD wrote: post #7

It's mind boggling that they didn't digitize every last scrap of paper around the project years ago, for starters.

I mean, they were never meant to last this long. NASA has a shoestring budget. I understand not taking the time and resources to do that when it could stop working a week later.

Re: NASA still maintains some of the Voyager spacecraft code from the 70s era

#25

Post by rbanffy »

anthonj wrote: post #6
glimshe wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would go further... This project gives a rare opportunity for a young engineer to learn to build truly mission critical, resilient software while requiring complete, top to bottom understanding of the software and hardware stack.

I am no longer a junior, but would have been upset to be tasked with refreshing the old historical obsolete laundry (no matter how sacred or distinguished), expecially when I already had experience delivering safety critical products packing much more modern technologies. The opportunity they would be offering is not rare at all! The opportunity to research and design something truly new on the other way is very scar…

What have you worked on that is as cool as a space probe that's cruising in interstellar space and still collecting valuable data?

There are a lot of things as cool as, done by people I know, such as the gyros on the Webb telescope, the APU in the F-35, or a small rack-mountable Cesium reference clock, but there aren't many opportunities like that.

Re: NASA still maintains some of the Voyager spacecraft code from the 70s era

#26

Post by rbanffy »

PurpleRamen wrote: post #23
lexicality wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I'm reviewing CVs and I see that you worked at NASA on the Voyager code, you're getting an interview just so I can ask about it. I wouldn't normally approve of CV driven development, but for this?!

But would you give them a job? Would they even match the requirements?

I would assume they have built some key problem-solving skills that can be valuable. Training in tooling is much easier than building the right mindset.

Re: NASA still maintains some of the Voyager spacecraft code from the 70s era

#27

Post by bigfatkitten »

bombcar wrote: post #4
glimshe wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would go further... This project gives a rare opportunity for a young engineer to learn to build truly mission critical, resilient software while requiring complete, top to bottom understanding of the software and hardware stack.

Even all that to the side, it lets you say you worked on the Voyager project!

There are a whole lot of people in this thread who would rather tell their grandkids that they worked on web apps and sold ads.

Re: NASA still maintains some of the Voyager spacecraft code from the 70s era

#28

Post by hilariously »

sublinear wrote: post #21
tamimio wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because software development back in the day wasn’t like how it’s now now, the charade so called software development now is a clown show: scrum, daily stand ups, open office style, tickets, tons of ci/cd BS, and of course, the wrangler aka PM and all politics involved, none of this existed like the cult it is now, I only had one experience in such environment and despite the effort I had to ask for some common sense…

> none of this existed like the cult it is now So you'd prefer for all this project management drama and power struggle to be invisible? All this scaffolding is not a cult. It exists to democratize the process. Your personal comfort is irrelevant to the results.

Unfortunately in many places it is indeed a cult and serves to ossify management decisions. We ARE doing Agile, what do you mean? No this person is the scrum master and they tell us what Agile is and then we do it, see?

I have worked at 8 different software places and none of them implemented things in a way I would call "genuinely agile" and most of them were just bad waterfall with more meetings and telling the engineers they are accountable for the bad ideas that are now their job.

CI/CD? How about make that only "Devops" job and then make the exact same undemocratized system before with gatekeepers who spend a significant amount of time blocking your work because they are afraid of things changing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...

Re: NASA still maintains some of the Voyager spacecraft code from the 70s era

#29

Post by sublinear »

roflmaostc wrote: post #16

Many of the issues could potentially be solved by modern LLMs? Reading, analyzing and assembling documentation could be probably done by LLMs. And by including old code and snippets into the training set, the LLM could be fairly proficient in writing this code probably too? Maybe someone knows more about the use/not-use of LLMs in this context?

That's insane.

Of all the possible projects, this is the one where it's both highly feasible for humans to learn and historically critical that we have a full understanding and control of its operation.

Re: NASA still maintains some of the Voyager spacecraft code from the 70s era

#30

Post by rbanffy »

bigfatkitten wrote: post #27
bombcar wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even all that to the side, it lets you say you worked on the Voyager project!

There are a whole lot of people in this thread who would rather tell their grandkids that they worked on web apps and sold ads.

It's a tragedy some of our best minds are dedicated to that, and digital surveillance so their corporate masters can sell better targeted ads with a higher click-thru rate.
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