Zuse's independent development of ideas that paralleled other early computer scientists' makes me wonder how much of our modern computer science (Von Neumann, L

Zuse's independent development of ideas that paralleled other early computer scientists' makes me wonder how much of our modern computer science (Von Neumann, Lambdas, clocks, registers, and all) was inevitable discoveries and how much was shaped by our pioneers. If we did it all over again, but with different people, would we end up with something similar, or something very different? Would we have digital, basically serial computer cores with layers of memory around them? Would our languages be like assembler and C and Lisp? Or are there potentially very different but equally practical alternatives out there?