Yeah, my dad just retired from United and flew 737, 767/77 and ended up with the 747-400 (among others). I don't think most traditionally trained pilots are too concerned about fly-by-wire (maybe I'm wrong), but my software experience certainly taints things for me.

My thoughts tend to drift into wondering how close to the edge of the envelope will the computer let me go? The answer is obviously a moving target as technologies and, indeed, testing environments and modeling systems change.

Also, even in the traditional "all hardware" flying model my life is hanging by some engineers' idea what is an acceptable failure rate anyway. To quote JP, "Oh God, our lives are in the hands of engineers". As we saw in Sioux City, even redundant hardware systems fail.

It's always an interesting discussion. I just hate adding potential software failure points to a systems that already has enough points of failure in the hardware. Even though I know that we're trading in some hardware failures for software (i.e., no long wires/pulleys or hydraulic lines/valves to fail).