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Comment by deanCommie | Hacker News Reader

> 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?

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

I think that's the case for most things where people who are not complete subject matter experts write about something. A lot of our own conversations about things are probably quite inaccurate in a lot of details.

In this particular case the author may even have asked back but what is the author going to do if he/she gets fed inaccurate information? I think the only blatant inaccuracy is the reference to DevOps, otherwise the description of agile is pretty OK too me.

I hope people won't fall into the usual trap where some inaccuracies in some media leads them into reading much less accurate but more extreme media which is something you often see in politics.

This is sometimes called the Gell-Mann amnesia effect.

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

Made up by Michael Crichton, if I'm not mistaken.

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.

Yes. The "trillion dollar" figure comes from Wikipedia, where it (a) is denominated in 2070 dollars, and (b) includes "operations and sustainment".

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.

Putting aside the accuracy of the NYT's definition, what's confusing to me is...why even mention "DevOps" in the first place, as if it were relevant elsewhere in the story, or as if it were something the general readership would know enough about to use as a point of reference (which I'm assuming they don't)?

Remove the reference to "DevOps", and you have a concise enough explanation of "so-called agile software development" and a cleaner paragraph overall:

> One solution favored by Winter during his recent tenure was agile development, a popular software engineering methodology used for quickly testing and evaluating features for new products.

(Since software teams in the U.S. government, such as 18F, also use agile dev these days, so it's not particularly relevant to point out its popularity in the "private sector")

Good point. As you suggest, the definition may or may not be "OK" but it certainly doesn't get into anything around how DevOps might be different from or go beyond agile. For a NYT audience, that's a pretty decent quick definition.

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.

It's because they don't care enough about being accurate. Maybe you're right, and that carelessness is a byproduct of speed. But, it's not like this was breaking news. They had enough time for a technical editor to have a look.

The author reported an extensive story about the F-35's flaws based on exclusive documents in June. This submitted story revisits that work (and writes it in the style of the NYT Mag):

https://www.defensenews.com/air/2019/06/12/the-pentagon-is-b...

Clicks are what publishers chase now, there is only so much time a modern reporter can research before they need to publish something. They have to weigh short term revenue vs. Pulitzer prize. An article or series of articles that truly brings enough positive attention to the defense industries largest project and the players involved might be considered, but can a team focus on that in the current click driven publishing space?

The article describes at length the thoughts of Lt. General Christopher Bogdan, who was in charge in 2014; Vice Admiral Mat Winter, who was in charge until this past July. The reporter for this article actually works for Defense News, and the NYT article cites material from, and links to her June 12 article, which refers to "documents exclusively obtained by Defense News" which describe 13 "category 1 deficiencies":

https://www.defensenews.com/air/2019/06/12/the-pentagon-is-b...

Note that the posted article is a NYT Magazine piece, which has different editorial style and convention from the newspaper. Typically, a story this long wouldn't be written by a non-staffer in the newspaper. But it's not uncommon for the magazine to commission a writer who has written a notable article for a different publication to generalize and elaborate on it for the NYT Magazine.

I think we agree on the sourcing, just we disagree on the definition of "inside".

> The current title I'm seeing is "Inside America’s Dysfunctional Trillion-Dollar Fighter-Jet Program" which seems misleading as well

"Dysfunctional" is also misleading. The program has produced three operational variants, including the first ever supersonic STOVL aircraft. The US and Israel have both conducted F-35 airstrikes. That is a called a "functional" (if by no means perfect) aircraft development program.

It's also encouraging to see the F-35A price falling as expected...

The comment you point out reminds me of something Margaret Hamilton said:

Also, what became apparent with Apollo – though it is not how it worked – is that it is better to define your system up front to minimise errors, rather than producing a bunch of code that then has to be corrected with patches on patches.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jul/13/margaret-...

So, in other words, it is better to do waterfall development?

Indeed, it sometimes probably is, and agile generally shouldn't mean you just make it up as you go along. But I think we've generally come to recognize that, at least in many cases, being more flexible and iterative.

This, to be clear, is not in any way a knock on the many people who developed software for Apollo. It was a type of project and set of technologies that made it difficult to be as iterative as, certainly, pure software projects are today.

I think her comment is specifically around software that is critical for human life support. She is advocating for design in such cases. I posted it because I would consider the SW for the F-35 to be in this category.

It’s worth questioning whether agile SW development that we do for websites, apps, etc... is good when human life hangs on the line.

Clearly, there was never going to be any way to patch the Apollo Guidance Computer in the middle of a mission. Even if that weren't true, the development cycle was so long that iterative development was never a realistic option.

I suspect a project like the F-35 is a hybrid, with elements that are life-or-death mission critical and absolutely need to Just Work, and elements that allow for refinement - even refinement-by-failure in some cases.

Which just underlines how complex a project like this is. A distant descendant of the Apollo Guidance Computer code is likely just one of (at least) hundreds of equivalently complex routines and features in the F-35 codebase.

Absolutely. The techniques depend upon the circumstances and that's often not recognized. Or at least there's over-rotation in one direction or the other to a degree that may not be appropriate.

Someone who did impressive things with method A saying they think a method B that they haven't tried is superior isn't much evidence in favor of B.

I would not be surprised, if 2-3 weeks from now, one of the US Presidential candidates, will be talking how they would save money (and redirect them into other programs), by decommissioning this kind of wasteful military programs.

And they will refer to this, 'well-researched piece by a 'reputable news source.

Let's see if I am right, will check in in 2-3 weeks...

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

The author is an expert in defense, specifically warplanes. She's not an expert in software engineering.

In the modern era, is it in fact possible to be an expert in the former but not the later?

That's just nytimes doing what nytimes does best. I've never found their articles to be well researched and either accidentally or purposely misleading.

News about them lately is also not in their favor. I'm sure this is just another piece (which has been covered to death by better and more accurate publications) that is intended to discredit the current administration more.

What's the error here? Using the word "DevOps" instead of "agile software development"

This is not that bad a quote.

Seems good enough for a general audience.

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