I totally get the first point, but this comment from Brian was made when the internet had been available for many, many years. It seems more like it felt newish

I totally get the first point, but this comment from Brian was made when the internet had been available for many, many years. It seems more like it felt newish at the time, and that is how he has seen it since then. I guess that's more why I find it to be an interesting comment. Regarding the second point, when I hear the term "associative arrays" or "associative lists" I think of them in a pretty high level of abstraction. Like really: a C struct is an association abstraction. A simple array of structs is not often considered an "associative array", but it can easily be used for the same things. Maybe it would be more accurate to say that the way they were using associative arrays way newish, rather than the construct itself.