I think it's perfectly fair.
UNIX was originally written as pair-programming.
Brooks refers to agile in The Mythical Man-Month (he didn't invent it, check his references)
UNIX was originally written as pair-programming.
Brooks refers to agile in The Mythical Man-Month (he didn't invent it, check his references)
You are being overly optimistic about the pace of human cultural development. The rest of the world is only just starting to realise again that perhaps we have cultural issues that lead to low quality results. Bell Labs have numerous advantages over the rest of the world when it came to fostering the sort of culture that produces high quality results. Just reading the history books really isn't enough for that to come about.
TLDR; I blame Windows ME on World War 1.
From http://www.drdobbs.com/open-source/interview-with-ken-thomps... :
KT: I did the first of two or three versions of UNIX all alone.
Later, he emphasizes that they didn't even look at each others' code:
DDJ: Was there any concept of looking at each other's code or doing code reviews?
KT: [Shaking head] We were all pretty good coders.
I remembering reading somewhere (Dennis Ritchie's C History article?) that once they both programmed a solution without consulting each other, and later when they read it, the solution was exactly the same, even down to the variables' name.
Power of C? Two people who thought alike?
>>KT: [Shaking head] We were all pretty good coders.
Which the modern world doesn't have enough of. Demand is so high that quality of supply doesn't matter, just enough to satiate the demand; which is in stark contrast to the early days, when computer science was a research field only privy to scientists and later to hackers and crackers. When it went mainstream, and grew to an industry, its no wonder that it acquired all that which comes with it.