Reflecting on the Tar Pit

From Chapter 1:

So far, this blog has just been focused on the familiar and weary tale of struggle in the Agency tar pit. As yet, no remedies or palliatives have been uttered. Nonetheless, our lofty goal is to suggest remedies or, at least, alternatives that might help the next guys built the large-scale, affordable, reliable software needed for the next generation space system.

It's only remotely possible that any suggestion made here would be of true or lasting merit. But there is a remote possibility--in fact, an inchoate idea or two is lurking in the dark recesses as a muddle. Nothing new. Nothing fancy. Nothing elaborate. Nothing easy. If the answers were easy, we would have already escaped the tar pit.

Before moving on, I'd encourage all to ask, why has so little has changed? And, it's not just NASA.

I'm reminded of a snippet from book by Amory Lovins had written in the 70's. He was urging the power utilities to consider the use of conservation as alternative to new power plants as a means of meeting projected energy needs (a radical idea at the time). ...Belief in economies of scale leads to ever larger and more centralized facilities... Such an energy future, is short, is merely the past writ large."

It seems we're facing the same mindset. Given the current course, we plan to meet our software engineering future by doing the same thing, only more of it. If that worked, would the Mythical Man-Month still be a relevant description of contemporary software engineering problems?

Lovins had a suggestion, a theory, a tractable alternative. I don't think the same could be said for any new approach that would facilitate the engineering of a large-scale, affordable, reliable software for the next generation space system. Not yet anyway.