A Moment of Awe and Terror

Caught this over on YouTube -- Global Air Traffic over a 24-hour period (time-lapsed):



I find stuff like this immensely cool, particularly when you think about the innumerable systems, technologies, and people that have to work together in concert to ensure that all of those little dots shown get from A to B without running into each other...or anything else, for that matter.

I also find myself feeling a slight tinge of terror, because I also realize that when I look at the flowing swarm of blips (particularly in the U.S.), and despite what certain professors may think, some of them are very likely using software that I wrote...

...in Java...

...by myself.

Holy Shit.