I've got to say I'm rather amused by the notion that type inference and GC are innovations of the last 20 years. Regarding now vs. the 80s, we have much better

I've got to say I'm rather amused by the notion that type inference and GC are innovations of the last 20 years. Regarding now vs. the 80s, we have much better tools for making assurance cases for critical software. So much progress has been made in both specification correctness and implementation correctness that I think the only way you could compare the two and say there hasn't been improvement is if you haven't tried to see what we can actually do now vs. then...