> Many claimed software was largely worthless because it was only replacing existing analog alternatives.

Reminds me of the famous and unfortunate quotes [1]

[1]https://www.ittc.ku.edu/~evans/stuff/famous.html

The Bill Gates quote at the end is unsourced. In the unlikely event Gates ever actually said or wrote that, somebody would have a citation.

He denies it himself, but a plausible explanation given here is that he perhaps meant '~ in the lifetime of this system': https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2863/did-bill-g...

(It goes back to 1985 apparently, so does seem unlikely it came from nowhere, since it wouldn't have seemed so ridiculous then.)

It would be interesting to see how many of these criticisms are criticisms of these things as they stood and not for their potential; it seems ridiculous to place the onus on the critics to see if someone can execute well in the future.

"Many claimed software was largely worthless because it was only replacing existing analog alternatives."

The most glaring flaw in that argument, especially with that specific context, is that those rockets would not exist without software.

Tbf, they the engineers I’m referencing right design The rockets but rather the test stands. They were used to things like manually actuated valves, analog data collection etc. In their world, they could have came up in industry with little to no software. Even after adoption, they thought software testing was a waste of time because “it’s just software, it doesn’t break.” Obviously, they were thinking as a mechanical engineer where “breaking” is synonymous with “wearing out” or “physically breaking”.