It's absolutely true that I use many of principles from OSU every day. Even though I'm primarily using TCL and building web-based systems I've found that for most of the important concepts what language you use doesn't really matter. So hey thanks for all those great ideas!
Bottom line is that no matter how I feel about my technical chops it's still working with people that is the critical thing. On my current project, for which I am the dev lead, there is my group, another internal group, and two external vendors that are pseudo-competitors! You have to play a lot of politics to get a system designed in a reaonable amount of time in that kind of scenario. It's as true here as anywhere that I've been, the people who are lacking in communication skills and people skills remain in the background.
Hope things are going well for you and CAST.
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