2 ms·
Why does everyone seem to believe this talk is about the fact that these problems were "solved" decades ago? My takeaway is that, no, these things weren't solve
by fasquoika 9y ago
Why does everyone seem to believe this talk is about the fact that these problems were "solved" decades ago? My takeaway is that, no, these things weren't solved, they were abandoned. We got tunnel vision and decided that a handful of ideas were what programming is, rather than just a tiny subset. This talk isn't about how the early programmers were better at everything, if anything it's the opposite, that we should question their decisions and not take anything for granted.
"Do you know why these ideas, and so many other good ideas came about in this particular time period, the 60's-early 70's? Why did it all happen then? It's because it was late enough that technology kinda got to the point where you could actually kinda do things with computers, but it was still early enough that nobody knew what programming was. Nobody knew what programming was supposed to be. And they knew they didn't know, so they tried everything."
- david927 9y agoThis talk is not saying that these problems were "solved" decades ago but rather, decades ago we had much better instincts and in many ways we were on the right track, and now we're not.
- fasquoika 9y agoExcept that the track we're on now was started then. Unix was created during the time period he's talking about. We've just stopped looking at the other stuff. They weren't "on the right track", they didn't have a track. That's the point: they were doing everything