10-03-2013, 09:19 AM
I'm in complete agreement with Brandizzo and Livium.
My first addition is that usually if the software-maker decides to incorporate wrong results (if his proggie was cracked) he makes this to be obvious for the graduated engineer. That's the aim: the cracker would not notice i.e. hydraulic losses in thousands of meters (AFT programs), or zig-zaggy diagrams (Radimpex). The engineer using the program will notice this immediately and would not say "the programmers don't know anything". LiviuM actually mentioned the same - nobody wants to be blamed for poor program that costs tenths of thousands.
The second is.. don't trust even the most expensive programs. The more money you pay doesn't make the results closer to reality. The more "secret black box" the program is - the more difficult is for the engineers to check what goes wrong there. On the opposite - free programs with open source are easy to be checked by the professionals and because they are usually much simpler programs (not so many "options" and space-age graphics to inflate the code) - it is easier for the programmer to handle it entirely.
My first addition is that usually if the software-maker decides to incorporate wrong results (if his proggie was cracked) he makes this to be obvious for the graduated engineer. That's the aim: the cracker would not notice i.e. hydraulic losses in thousands of meters (AFT programs), or zig-zaggy diagrams (Radimpex). The engineer using the program will notice this immediately and would not say "the programmers don't know anything". LiviuM actually mentioned the same - nobody wants to be blamed for poor program that costs tenths of thousands.
The second is.. don't trust even the most expensive programs. The more money you pay doesn't make the results closer to reality. The more "secret black box" the program is - the more difficult is for the engineers to check what goes wrong there. On the opposite - free programs with open source are easy to be checked by the professionals and because they are usually much simpler programs (not so many "options" and space-age graphics to inflate the code) - it is easier for the programmer to handle it entirely.