In fact, in many ways we've made things worse because not only does the sand keep shifting, there is now way too much sand. Young people come into the field and they want to make their mark. So we are constantly going through "next big thing" phases, some big like OOP, some smaller like React, only later to realize that what seemed so very interesting was really a lot of navel gazing and didn't really mater that much. It was just a choice, among many.
I can only hope one day some breakthrough in C.S. will get us past this "Cambrian Explosion" period and things will finally start to settle down. But I am not holding my breath. Instead I am learning Forth ;)
> I can only hope one day some breakthrough in C.S. will get us past this "Cambrian Explosion" period and things will finally start to settle down.
I genuinely do feel like we're in the stone age in this industry right now. I've thought about it a lot, but of course, it's hard to really get to the good ideas when you can't hop on lot of stepping stones that will be found later and taken for granted.
I think a few things will happen. 100 or 200 years from now (if it's even appropriate to think on such a timescale!), we'll have some very large scale, stable data storage systems that people can simply rely on. A few common development paradigms will have thoroughly been cemented in our collective consciousness, and the programmers of the day will be essentially what construction workers are right now, perhaps with a bit more creativity. They'll follow plans and be put into rigid confines when programming with the system, and it'll be scalable from a development perspective.
I haven't got much further than that. It's hard to step more than a few layers deep on stuff like this. A lot of the rest of it depends on how things like AI and VR and a bunch of stuff I can barely imagine will pan out. But from a software point of view, I think we're still waiting on a bunch of 100-monkey-style revelations.
In fact, in many ways we've made things worse because not only does the sand keep shifting, there is now way too much sand. Young people come into the field and they want to make their mark. So we are constantly going through "next big thing" phases, some big like OOP, some smaller like React, only later to realize that what seemed so very interesting was really a lot of navel gazing and didn't really mater that much. It was just a choice, among many.
I can only hope one day some breakthrough in C.S. will get us past this "Cambrian Explosion" period and things will finally start to settle down. But I am not holding my breath. Instead I am learning Forth ;)