[bmelton]

Having actually worked with NSA programmers, I can tell you that while they tend to be absolutely brilliant, that doesn't necessarily make them any better at making things "easy to use", "intuitive" or even necessarily "good".

When it comes to algorithm design, reverse engineering, or crypto, I know exactly who to call when I need help. When it comes to a layout that works, or in many cases, even just coding up some fairly simple HTML with CSS, my NSA buddies aren't in the top 50 of people I'd call.

Yes, they're brilliant. The best of them though, produce websites (if they're capable of coding on the web) that look more like stallman.org than anything like healthcare.org.

[udit99]

I see your point, but the primary challenge of delivering large, complex software projects in a reasonable timeframe applies to both endeavours.