Then and Now
When I was at school we used slide rules to calculate and technical drawing skills to turn ideas into diagrams. Strangely my generation of old gifts managed to build aircraft that did not have cracks in the wing five minutes after they left the factory.
Slide rules and a clockwork IRS got men to the moon. Pilots were trained to fly on limited panel and we could all safely land an airliner off a visual approach.
Unfortunately the current generation of computer geeks who design and build aircraft seems in love with CAD and efficient aircraft but the latter are poorly made and often include design flaws.
Older pilots often in positions to influence have allowed cost to drive pilot training to the point where we do not adequately prepare crews to cope with the often subtle and complex problems seen on the flight deck.
As of today the A380 has suffered from wing cracking and is now joined by the plastic fantastic B787.