>> French idea of relief is a bottle of wine and watching women walking by the café.

That does it: I'm moving to France!

A graduate project is not nearly as fluid as a paying gig. It is agreed up front at the start of the project and generally this is what is produced. Not so in the real world.

Then, your work is graded. Maybe not the best thing for your academic career, but in many cases you can take a C and move on. I business this is called "failing" and this means all of a sudden you and your employees have nothing to eat and all the lights turn off in your house.

There are no advisers. There are no facilities or resources available to you save for what you can provide for yourself. The deadline can abruptly change due to funding and competition (along with 1000 other reasons).

These are just some of the reasons why academic work is not a great measure of real world experience. Mind you I am not saying acedemic work is useless, but I definitely differentiate between the two.

Coding standards: pick anything and stick with it. Use Google's. Why not? (Haha I note they are using svn.)

http://google-styleguide.googl...
https://google-styleguide.goog...

These types of decisions are many times arbitrary and one valid approach rarely is any better than another.

You haven't even started and you are already bogged down on "coding standards" and "best practices."

In The Beginning only one thing matters: robust code that does what you want it to very well. Maintainability? Pah - you need a future for that to matter. Best practices don't matter if you are bankrupt, or have a product nobody will touch.

...why cat food cans generally have pop-tops, but tuna fish cans generally don't?

Project Loon strikes me this way: they are missing something obvious.

Do Not Hire.

Sort of like the Neosocialism that America had to stamp out in the 1940's!

Actually, planning is the first to die.

Having dealt with the NASA budgeting hell for years, I am going with "doubtful" on that one.

...this sort of thing would not happen.

Boomers do not operate in conjunction with battle groups: they go out in to the vast ocean and disappear. Their biggest defense is that they are virtually impossible to find.

The ICBM's... well everyone knows where they are (ever notice how on google maps they all are oriented identically? It is neat in a morbid way.) Good luck trying to damage one however. A 2000 bomb would quite possibly mar the cover the the point that it would have to be repainted.

https://www.google.com/maps/@4...
https://www.google.com/maps/@4...
https://www.google.com/maps/@4...
https://www.google.com/maps/@4...

>> What I have to ask though is in what possible scenario of a nation launching nuclear strike on the U.S. do you see them not committing to wiping out the U.S. retaliatory capability ?

Any nation that doesn't have the numbers to wipe out the US capability: that being every nuclear power on earth except Russia. In the case of Russia, the silos represent a force that absolutely must be dealt with. No attack subs or fighter jets or any other conventional means can counter the ICBM's: they have to be dealt with using a portion of their arsenal.

This exposes one of their biggest drawbacks - they require the other side(s) to maintain a hardened ICBM force, and their relevance is based on Cold War style calculus. Currently the US/UK Trident force is the only sub based first strike capability. The other boomers just don't have the accuracy to threaten US ICBM's (yet).

Because mechanics, fuel men, air crew, guards, and weapons techs don't count.

Trident D5 missiles can carry up to 14 warheads. The Minuteman III can only carry three.

Neither one currently carries their maximum load due to treaty limitations.

Land based ICBM's can only be destroyed by a nuclear weapon (this will remain true for the foresee able future). While the US itself might be able to pull off a successful conventional strike against and undefended one, no adversary will be able to.

A foe MUST task a sizable portion of their arsenal to deal with them.

Bombers can be shot down, subs sunk. Maybe not easily, but it is possible.