[bunderbunder]

> the Government does not have a history of writing good code

I'd love to hear more about that, because it goes against my own experience. (And I'll go ahead and disclaim that I'm obviously speaking anecdotally here.)

Whenever I've run into software that was developed by the US government it's generally been pretty competent. No worse, and maybe a little better, than what I'm used to seeing come out of the companies I've worked with. Certainly better than the stream of epic fails that seems to characterize what results from outsourcing to private contractors.

[gknoy]

Partly that may be because they can (in theory) work closer to the true customer, rather than having an additional contract/specification-based interface to getting things made. When you don't find out for six months that you completely misunderstood the client's needs, it's hard to build good stuff -- frustrating for the client, and for the developers.

If, however, you ARE your own client, such as writing research code or simulation/test code, you likely have a clearer idea of what needs to be done.

[celticninja]

it depends on who does what, if the people that want/need/use the code are responsible for writing it then I woudl agree, if you have a different department/wing/group writing the code then what you end up with may not be useable by the end user or may not be as useful anyway. If you add in another step where lots of disparate groups have input i.e. impse a set of requirements, usually indepdent of one another, then what you get left with is an expensive, unworkable, useless piece of spftware that everyone is forced to use until someone else decide to have a crack at improving it.

source: i have worked for govt.

[josephagoss]

Sorry it was just an assumption I made. Over the years all the stuff I have read point towards bad code from the Government. I guess the NSA would be of higher caliber though, similar to NASA embedded code.