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mech422 • today at 6:17 AM • 4 replies • view on HN

Off the top of my head, I can think of the following during my career:

   1. COBOL (we actually did still use it back in the 80s)

   2.AI back in the 80s (Dr. Dobbs was all concerned about it ...)

   3. RAD

   4. No-Code

   5. Off-shoring

   6. Web 2.0

   7. Web 3.0

   8. possibly the ADA/provably correct push depending on your area of programming
TBH - I think the AI's are nice tools, but they got a long way to go before it's the 'end of computer programming as we know it'

edit: formatting

Replies

kuboble • today at 6:58 AM

Stack overflow (and internet in general) changed the programming as we (at least some of us) knew it.

When I was learning programming I had no internet, no books outside of library, nobody to ask for days.

I remember vividly having spent days trying to figure out how to use the stdlib qsort, and not being able to.

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bryanrasmussen • today at 10:45 AM

OK, those are all ones that didn't change programming as we know it, but some came closer than others right?

I definitely considered some of those in my list of failed revolutions.

My one completely successful revolution is moving from punch card programming.

ralferoo • today at 10:33 AM

FWIW I worked for a company from 2002 to 2006 that still had quite a large COBOL team even then. Some of the team members were also in their 20s and they'd been hired and trained up in COBOL.

fweimer • today at 7:57 AM

COBOL certainly had a lasting impact, but only for some application domains. The rest didn't seem to be particularly successful or impactful. Maybe RAD if you consider office application macros and end user report generation in it. (Spreadsheets extended programming to non-programmers and had a long-lasting impact, but I wouldn't call them RAD.)