Computer science programs really need to introduce something like a "History of Computing Ideas" course as a mandatory element. Maybe we can get away from rehashing the same cycle of trends every five years and move onto some different wheels.
Isn't that the whole programme?
In my final year I had a couple of more advanced courses in which we could just about get our heads around results published by the lecturer four years ago when we started the programme. Everything else is just working up to that, from Boole's ideas; through Turing's and von Neumann's.
There is a lot of practical implementation history that people are often woefully ignorant of, and it leads them to tread the same paths over and over and over.
- Here are the core GNU command line utilities; make, sed, grep, etc. They are battle-tested, use them, don't rewrite them a dozen times in JavaScript
- Here is the progression of version control tools that people have used over time, and some reasons why we've moved on from SourceSafe and rcs to Git.
- Here's the history of how people have done databases, flat-file, vs sql vs nosql
- etc, etc, etc.Alan Kay frequently laments the direction of the computer industry, calling computing "not-quite-a-field" and "pop culture". From an interview in 2012:
Quote:
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> Kay: [...] [I] happen to believe in history. The lack of interest, the disdain for history is what makes computing not-quite-a-field.
> Binstock [interviewer]: You once referred to computing as pop culture.
> Kay: It is. Complete pop culture. I'm not against pop culture. Developed music, for instance, needs a pop culture. [...] The big problem with our culture is that it's being dominated [more by] pop-culture content than it is for high-culture content. I consider jazz to be a developed part of high culture. Anything that's been worked on and developed and you [can] [sic] go to the next couple levels.
[...]
> [Kay continues]: [P]op culture holds a disdain for history. Pop culture is all about identity and feeling like you're participating. It has nothing to do with cooperation, the past or the future — it's living in the present. I think the same is true of most people who write code for money. They have no idea where [their culture came from]. [sic - brackets in original]
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It's a great summary of the programming fads that have come to characterize tech culture and how disappointing it is for anyone who is trying to navigate this field with some intent and presence of mind higher than fitting in with the crowd or cashing in on a perceived gold rush.
It's also just a great memorialization of the concept of pop culture in general; pop culture is about a feeling of belonging and community, and engaging positive biological responses associated with social approval and community. It's something that people do to give themselves that rush of praise, and then retroactively try to justify. After a couple of years, no one can understand what anyone was thinking because they were just rationalizing riding the tide.
And, IMO, it aptly describes not only the React phenomenon, but also Kubernetes (aka "shared hosting"), Docker (aka "static linking"), etc. Also IMO, big dollar players stoke this negative culture because it's profitable for them.
It's not necessarily that these technologies won't leave their mark, it's just that they're not the revelations people pretend they are.
Regardless, suspicion is always warranted when people insist that the contemporary is novel, in computing or practically anything else.
[0] http://www.drdobbs.com/architecture-and-design/interview-wit... \ archive: https://archive.fo/DkQOc