Question: what's your favourite project you have worked on

Guy Rixon answered on 14 Mar 2018:

The control software for the British/Dutch/Spanish family of telescopes on La Palma in the Canary Islands. Back in the 1990s, I was part of a team that replaced the older software with new programs; in the later part of the project, I was the manager in charge of the developers, as well as writing some of the code myself. The idea was to have programs that were nicer to use for the astronomers; which ran on new computers (the old ones were ancient and worn out); and which went faster, so the astronomers could do more in one night.
We succeeded! Over about five years, we replaced almost all the old computers and programs, and often, when the moon was full (worst time for astronomy, so least valuable nights) I was out at a telescope installing and testing new software. We finished in the year 2000 or 2001; I forget the exact date.
It was immensely satisfying to rebuild an installation used by many, many professionals, and to get a good result. Normally, I’d expect any software we installed to be replaced by better software after maybe 10 years, so what we did then should be long gone. That didn’t happen: the people who manage and use the telescopes are still satisfied with what we made and it’s still in use every night!