At 23 Years Old, Alice Finally Meets the Mad Hatter
Alice (ALIS) is the problem you want to have... because solving it in the one instance forces you to generate more optimal solutions for problems that you didn't even know you had in other instances...
But, what the problem, now having reached adulthood still unresolved, says about the military and software ? Having awareness of it still being a problem now some 23 years after it was selected as the problem you wanted to have, to solve... is probably a lot more important as an "unresolved" issue than finally having an approach to developing "the fix" for it.
The same problem that infects and inhibits thinking about software... infects thinking about how we fight.
Two decades in, the Air Force admits they still "don't do software well"... but, they're still buying a jet, designed two decades ago, that is BY DESIGN fully dependent on them doing software well.
That's not a criticism, still... The F-35, even with its litany of known problems, is orders of magnitude better than the alternatives... like the F-22... which were packaged up with problems that are fixed in hardware.
The F-35 is forcing the F-22 to get better... and that's happening now, too, finally... but, again, we're twenty years along in this process... and its only happening now ?
There's nothing wrong with the software... that isn't wrong with the organization. |
