I've discussed this with some friends in the past. I think the tragedy that befell Software Engineering was that most companies had no Engineering track for a

I've discussed this with some friends in the past. I think the tragedy that befell Software Engineering was that most companies had no Engineering track for a career. To advance your career you generally had to get yourself promoted into a team leader style position where you code a little less, then into a project management position where you code only a little and then into an executive position where you don't code at all anymore. I'm convinced that that has led to the majority of the amnesia in our field. We lost a generation of experience.