A programmer's opinions of various technologies is highly trajectory-dependent. The problem of uneven distribution of lore is exacerbated by two startling fact

A programmer's opinions of various technologies is highly trajectory-dependent. The problem of uneven distribution of lore is exacerbated by two startling factors: we tend to be ignorant of the history of our field; and we are fashion-driven to a fault. I suspect that's how you get educated intelligent people with, um, unusual ideas about things. (E.g. I've worked with fellows who did not know who Alan Kay was, or what Prolog is.) In re: Rust, Graydon Hoare gave a talk on the history of compilers in which he doesn't mention Prolog. https://thenewstack.io/rust-creator-graydon-hoare-recounts-the-history-of-compilers/ https://thenewstack.io/rust-creator-graydon-hoare-recounts-t... I suppose he just didn't think it was relevant, but it's possible even he is a little ignorant? I see a ray of sunshine in the form of a nascent and inchoate new paradigm that could be called "Categorical Programming", Conal Elliott has the scent: http://conal.net/papers/compiling-to-categories/ http://conal.net/papers/compiling-to-categories/ CT provides a mathematical formalism for finding the most highly factored forms of various functions/programs, enabling a kind of "convergence" of code to its most efficient form. But that's a big ol' tangent. My point is, it's often more informative to try to understand the context in which something someone says makes sense, than to just decry them as wrong. Oh, and to remind folks to read your history!