Parallel Universe

The transition from Dowty to Menasco was easy, it was essentially the same company as far as my limited world of stress analysis was concerned.

Even the programs had the same names...

The methods for creating text files were different, the procedure for running and executing the programs were different but the actual programs, well, the input format was the same and the output was predominantly the same.

Which struck me as odd.

In fact, Menasco had their own manual for their programs that felt vaguely familiar, it wasn't as organized or as updated as the Dowty version, however, at times I felt as though I had slipped into a parallel universe.

Access to source code, well, that was a different thing altogether. At Dowty, once proficiency at FORTRAN had been established, analysts could request access to a copy of the source code to attempt to fix errors or improve accuracy, this was quite tightly controlled and any changes would be placed in a logbook and text added to the source to explain what subroutines had been changed.

Eventually, changes would roll into the programs manual at the subsequent release.

At Menasco, there was no access to source code at all. It was all handled via one guy, a chap called Alvin Fong who was highly protective of the cache of programs and nobody except himself would alter or change any program. The problem was compounded by the fact that Alvin was usually a very busy man, concerned with his own discipline (Dynamics, Landing Predictions etc) so that any fixes or tweaks requested by the stress jockeys would go on an endless "back burner" eventually to be forgotten about or just discarded with disdain.

It was a puzzle then, that two different cultures of program management in competing companies would have a set of core programs that had almost identical inputs, similar outputs and most intriguingly, the same names...