This article is very much at odds with my 15-year (1988-2000, 2001-2004) experience writing software at NASA (albeit at JPL, which is to say the unmanned space program, but still NASA). In my experience there was just as much politics, marketing hype, and general bullshit as I've seen in the commercial world. It was actually pretty amazing to me some times that things worked at all, let alone that they worked as well…
As I wrote when this showed up on proggit, Not to put too fine a point on it, but I would be very skeptical about using NASA as a good example for much of anything, but especially software development. My bonifides: I'm 49; have spent roughly 25 years as a systems programmer, systems administrator, and general bit wrangler; and I worked for 8 years at the Marshall Space Flight Center, specifically the NASA Enterprise…
I completely agree with this, though I think it's important to note two things. First, despite the dysfunction, they do, more often than not, make things that work under extremely challenging conditions. And second, a lot of the dysfunction is not their fault, but is a consequence of the fact that they are a government agency and hence ultimately answerable to Congress. Not only that, but they are a government agency created to fight a (cold) war that ended almost thirty years ago so they have been rudderless for a long time. The fact that they've done anything other than suck up taxpayer dollars is a testament to the incredible skill, both technical and political, of many of the people in the agency. Notwithstanding my vocal criticism of the organization, I have tremendous respect for many of the people who work there.