> if they had been forced to do it on ancient mainframes with punched card readers Interesting point. I for one started out with punched cards, and your point

> if they had been forced to do it on ancient mainframes with punched card readers Interesting point. I for one started out with punched cards, and your point is valid: you had to think deeply when preparing your next program submission, because turnaround was slo-o-ow and often kept you in the computing center waiting, waiting, waiting. So one might argue that when we got terminals that submitted "virtual punch cards" and got back "virtual printouts" (this is late 70s), it debased the practice of programming. /s OTOH in this day and age, the quick compile times of Go are - to put it bluntly - absolutely wonderful.