I have been watching this thread with some interest. R & D "in the small" is always challenging. And MTH's investment in DCS has never, IMO, been very large (or large enough). Nonetheless, whether we are talking about DCS or Legacy or some future system, I remain somewhat concerned about the “technology for technology’s sake” mentality in the hobby.
But let me explain. I’m not a Luddite, either. I’ve spent 40+ years in software development, 16 of them in the toll industry where reliability and accuracy is the entire ballgame. I know first-hand what over-complicating systems and feature bloat can lead to – catastrophic breakdown and serious maintenance issues. I am a firm believer in the KISS principle.
As food for thought, consider the electric car movement. Right now, automobiles contain (and this is only going to increase) hundreds of thousands of lines of code (all from different sources, all component specific). A friend, Dr. Robert Charette, has written extensively in IEEE publications about the implications of this dependence on software. He thinks, and I agree, that we are about to relive the software crisis in the context of the modern automobile. During the 1970's, 1980's and even through the 2000's, software errors led to catastrophic results in manned and unmanned aircraft and missiles.
Complexity is its own "reward". We're seeing this in a small way in our model trains.
Just something to think about,
George
