Remember the Computer Science Past Or Be Condemned To Repeat It? 479
theodp writes "In the movie Groundhog Day, a weatherman finds himself living the same day over and over again. It's a tale to which software-designers-of-a-certain-age can relate. Like Philip Greenspun, who wrote in 1999, 'One of the most painful things in our culture is to watch other people repeat earlier mistakes. We're not fond of Bill Gates, but it still hurts to see Microsoft struggle with problems that IBM solved in the 1960s.' Or Dave Winer, who recently observed, 'We marvel that the runtime environment of the web browser can do things that we had working 25 years ago on the Mac.' And then there's Scott Locklin, who argues in a new essay that one of the problems with modern computer technology is that programmers don't learn from the great masters. 'There is such a thing as a Beethoven or Mozart of software design,' Locklin writes. 'Modern programmers seem more familiar with Lady Gaga. It's not just a matter of taste and an appreciation for genius. It's a matter of forgetting important things.' Hey, maybe it's hard to learn from computer history when people don't acknowledge the existence of someone old enough to have lived it, as panelists reportedly did at an event held by Mark Zuckerberg's FWD.us last Friday!"
Back to BASIC (Score:3, Funny)
10 GOTO 20
20 GOTO 10
'Web Based' Coding is not the same... (Score:5, Funny)
We marvel that the runtime environment of the web browser can do things that we had working 25 years ago on the Mac
I don't remember that code running cross platform on varying architectures. The web as an platform for distribution should not be compared to an actual OS...that doesn't even make sense.
What past was he from? (Score:3, Funny)
He says system performance is the same as it was way back then. He thinks that stuff just happened immediately on those systems because they were running very efficient code. So what. Here's a simple test. Go get one of those computers and set it next to yours. Turn them both on. Mine would be at a desktop before the old one even thinks about getting down to actually running the operating system. Or start a program. On a current system it loads now. As in, right now. Back then it was a waiting game. Everything was a waiting game. He must have simply forgotten or repressed those memories.
Re:The thing about repeating the past (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Back to BASIC (Score:5, Funny)
Lisp never 'comes back'. It merely recurses.
Re:In Browser (Score:5, Funny)
We marvel that the runtime environment of the web browser can do things that we had working 25 years ago on the Mac.
Did the Mac, 25 years ago, allow people to load code from a remote server and execute it locally in a sandbox and in a platform independent manner all in a matter of a couple of seconds? No. No it did not.
We should then pay homage to the Mac 25 years ago, when it basically did what Doug Englebart demonstrated 45 years ago. [youtube.com] Nice logic you have there.
Dude, just ignore this guy. Of all people who have the right to indulge in a good, old-fashioned 'get off my lawn' rant, Dave Winer ranks last. This is the man who, for our sins, gave us XMLRPC and SOAP, paving the way for the re-invention of... well, everything, in a web browser.
Port 80 died for this man's sins....
Re:Back to BASIC (Score:2, Funny)
Re: Back to BASIC (Score:5, Funny)