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It's unfortunate that the article speaks so much of NASA engineers and managers, but fails to mention the actual engineers that designed, built, and tested it:

It's unfortunate that the article speaks so much of NASA engineers and managers, but fails to mention the actual engineers that designed, built, and tested it: TRW (now Northrup Grumman) and Ball Aerospace. > The concepts used to create the JWST are built on the same concepts used on the first satellites and space probes in the 1950s. AKA, the field of Systems Engineering [0]. Further reading if you really want to take a deep dive [1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_engineering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_engineering [1] https://www.amazon.com/Mission-Analysis-Design-Technology-Library/dp/1881883108 https://www.amazon.com/Mission-Analysis-Design-Technology-Li...

flyyingbarron 5y ago
Fair enough, but I felt that detailing the contractors would lengthen the article and not add to my general points. I did mention Northrup Grumman engineers in the caption of one image.
- behnamoh 5y ago
  Honestly, you writing it on medium is itself a failure point. Many people can't read it due to medium's shady paywall business.
cardosof 5y ago
+1 for systems engineering. Sadly it isn't more common in software development.
- da_chicken 5y ago
  It was when software delivery involved distribution of physical media. Now that it's all done over digital networks, people have moved to early deployment models where failure in the customer's hands is all but ubiquitous.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    Indeed. I see this as our downfall: if the price of failure drops then failure becomes commonplace.
    - fullstackchris 5y ago
      That's brilliant. It puts my general vibe of software basically for the past 10 years (maybe longer? for me mostly the advent of the app stores and near serial release of hundreds of thousands of apps) into a single sentance.
- flyyingbarron 5y ago
  +1 for systems engineering indeed. That's one of the reasons I write my blog - I think there are plenty of inspirational & aspirational lessons software developers (especially, but no only, in the DevOps and SRE domains) can learn from the space exploration. If you're interested, my first article can be found at : https://medium.com/ibm-garage/out-of-this-world-lessons-from-the-apollo-lunar-landings-part-i-703ff4f872ce https://medium.com/ibm-garage/out-of-this-world-lessons-from...
- waiseristy 5y ago
  Systems engineering roles are typically considers lesser / lower skilled than software roles as well. Which is absolutely ridiculous
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    If programmers were held to standards routinely upheld by systems engineer, software would not be such crap. There would also be less of it, which would be another boon.
23e3sdw 5y ago
Northrup Grumman is the type of company that's happy to bill the government for 3 very senior engineers to spend 4 months to rewrite a small program in a different programming language. It's no wonder the JWST is 10x+ over budget.

flyyingbarron 5y ago

Fair enough, but I felt that detailing the contractors would lengthen the article and not add to my general points. I did mention Northrup Grumman engineers in the caption of one image.

behnamoh 5y ago
Honestly, you writing it on medium is itself a failure point. Many people can't read it due to medium's shady paywall business.

cardosof 5y ago

+1 for systems engineering. Sadly it isn't more common in software development.

da_chicken 5y ago
It was when software delivery involved distribution of physical media. Now that it's all done over digital networks, people have moved to early deployment models where failure in the customer's hands is all but ubiquitous.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  Indeed. I see this as our downfall: if the price of failure drops then failure becomes commonplace.
  - fullstackchris 5y ago
    That's brilliant. It puts my general vibe of software basically for the past 10 years (maybe longer? for me mostly the advent of the app stores and near serial release of hundreds of thousands of apps) into a single sentance.
flyyingbarron 5y ago
+1 for systems engineering indeed. That's one of the reasons I write my blog - I think there are plenty of inspirational & aspirational lessons software developers (especially, but no only, in the DevOps and SRE domains) can learn from the space exploration. If you're interested, my first article can be found at : https://medium.com/ibm-garage/out-of-this-world-lessons-from-the-apollo-lunar-landings-part-i-703ff4f872ce https://medium.com/ibm-garage/out-of-this-world-lessons-from...
waiseristy 5y ago
Systems engineering roles are typically considers lesser / lower skilled than software roles as well. Which is absolutely ridiculous
- ncmncm 5y ago
  If programmers were held to standards routinely upheld by systems engineer, software would not be such crap. There would also be less of it, which would be another boon.

23e3sdw 5y ago

Northrup Grumman is the type of company that's happy to bill the government for 3 very senior engineers to spend 4 months to rewrite a small program in a different programming language. It's no wonder the JWST is 10x+ over budget.