I'll byte. :-)I doubt that there are many competent folks that couldn't adapt one way or another quite easily. Most of us in engineering community are reinventing ourselves every 5 or 10 years out of necessity, anyway. That said, for the engineering fun factor, I'll take the old days.
Ten reasons: 1) smaller bureaucracies 2) less complex projects that might actually work the first time 3) less complex projects that one person could actually understand 4) less complex projects that you could complete in less than a year5) happier customers because most products actually work without random failures after 3 months of time
6) customers that will pay for special one-off projects 7) smaller, more focused teams8) most projects done at a single location (very few midnight conference calls with India or China) 9) regular working hours (you can find your team-mate when you need him or her) 10) trips to cool places like the General Dynamics F-16 factory in Fort Worth
Regards, Mike W. N.N. Thayer wrote:
Here's a question that's bounced around in my head for a while. The scenario is: take a bunch of programmers, system administrators, hardware techies, et cetera and unceremoniously dump them in the 1960's. They come only with their existing knowledge, and must adjust it accordingly if they are to continue along their line of work. Assume that situational side-concerns such as money, ID, and living space are irrelevant. What is the manner of this acclimation to a previous generation of technology? What challenges are faced? Would someone in a specific occupation, such as a programmer, be more likely to pass the inevitable weeding process?