Programming is an engineering discipline. Engineering has some things of crafts and is influenced by a culture. It is the same in any kind of engineering, there

Programming is an engineering discipline. Engineering has some things of crafts and is influenced by a culture. It is the same in any kind of engineering, there are fashions in bio-chemisty as there are fashions in how you build a bridge or how you design an electronical circuit. In the 70s, it was in fashion to make buildings with a lot of asbestos in it, just like in the late 90s everybody used to build systems around SQL databases. But now people don't do it so much, not because the culture has changed, but because it was not such a great idea in the first place, and as we progress in our field, we know how to make things better.