There are very, very few movies that when I see them on the tele, (no I'm not British) I have to stop and watch them.  The Sandlot, A Few Good Men, and of course Apollo 13.  Even though I've seen them all several, several times I simply can't help myself.  Apollo 13 was critically acclaimed, however, was it really that great of a movie?  Eh, I'm not so sure, but I'm still amazed that 40 years ago they sent someone to the moon!  This is where the nerd in me comes out, just imagine, if someone told us, "Hey, you gotta send 3 guys to space and the entire guidance system has to run on a blackberry.".  We would totally freak out, yet, we'd have an advantage because our computer, aka the blackberry, would still be waaaay more powerful than their computer was.


Programmers today are so spoiled and I have to admit, considerably less skilled than those gentleman, myself included. The real question is, is it our fault?  A java program for instance, can't run in 1K of memory.  And maybe I could geek out a C/C++ program to do the same thing, but at what cost?  I just lost all portability (for the most part) with that move and to what end? To save a meg of memory space?  I think its just one of those things that happens.  As time moves on, we make things easier so we're more productive.  To do that, requires trade offs and sacrifices.  At the end of the day we have to use the tools most suited to the particular task at hand.


So could we write a program using our blackberry to guide a space shuttle to the moon?  I'd say yes.  Could I?  Maybe? Probably not.  Who knows?  One thing I do know, is those guys did it and my hat is off to them.