This weekend I gave a speech saying that software technology has mostly stopped advancing, and stalled sometime in the mid-1990s.

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URL: https://x.com/Jonathan_Blow/status/1440034780209303559
Author: Jonathan Blow (@Jonathan_Blow)
Posted: 2021-09-20 19:27:00

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1/ @Jonathan_Blow

This weekend I gave a speech saying that software technology has mostly stopped advancing, and stalled sometime in the mid-1990s. I had difficulty convincing many people (and seemed in able to communicate the idea clearly). Then today I open Hacker News and see an article …

2/ @Jonathan_Blow

called, “Inspecting coredumps like it’s 2021,” and think hey, I am interested in program visualization and debugging, maybe someone did something cool. I open the link, and the contents of the article are “run gdb on the core file, type bt to see a backtrace, this works better ..

3/ @Jonathan_Blow

if you have symbols. Also you can collect statistics from many core files.” At the time of this tweet, none of the HN comments have said hey wait, this is 1985 debugging, what is the 2021 part? (The 2021 part seems to be, it’s now much harder to get the core file).

4/ @Jonathan_Blow

I don’t mean to pick on the particular article or commenters, it’s just a very clear sign of how deeply stuck things are, and to what degree younger programmers do not see this because they are flooded with things to learn that look new but contribute almost nothing.

Branches: 2021-09-20-CryptoAntonioni-is-there-anyone-any-org-doing-work-you-think-to, 2021-09-20-UnfleshedO-what-about-crash-reporting-systems-like-crashpad, 2021-09-20-DogIsABot-curious-if-programmers-will-ever-start-using, 2021-09-20-bartoszkrupa-hmm-if-anything-i-could-say-about-current-state, 2021-09-20-fdeth-i-guess-the-main-improvement-is-that-now-you-can, 2021-09-20-Karyuutensei-big-part-due-to-corporations-taking-over-the, 2021-09-20-Turning_Wheel-as-a-younger-programmer-i-think-the-gravitation, 2021-09-21-snk_xed-how-about-other-engineering-fields-it-seems-most, 2021-09-21-egonelbre-not-sure-how-well-they-fit-into-your-category-but, 2021-09-21-AaditDoshi-are-we-talking-about-low-level-tech-or-just-the

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source	twitter
date	2021-09-20
tags	archive, twitter, jonathan_blow
description	This weekend I gave a speech saying that software technology has mostly stopped advancing, and stalled sometime in the mid-1990s.

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This weekend I gave a speech saying that software technology has mostly stopped advancing, and stalled sometime in the mid-1990s.

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@dneto1969 @redgpus @cmuratori @Jonathan_Blow @johnkslang Oh, come on.

@Jonathan_Blow Are we talking about low level tech or just the tools used to debug and visualize problems in code?

@Jonathan_Blow Not sure how well they fit into your category, but, coverage guided fuzzing, dynamic/static race detection, Valgrind/ASan/MSan, TLA+, Paxos/Raft, CRDT-s

@Jonathan_Blow How about other engineering fields? It seems most of them had periods of significant advancements during the 20th century; but appear to be not advancing at that rate today.

@Jonathan_Blow is there anyone/any org doing work you think to advance the state of programming ? Anything you think is interesting / worth taking a look at?

@Jonathan_Blow curious if programmers will ever start using waveform debuggers in a widespread way like logic engineers do

@Jonathan_Blow Big part due to corporations taking over the software industry.

@Jonathan_Blow As a younger programmer - I think the gravitation back towards these archaic CLI tools mainly comes from the fact that the newer ones have so much hardware overhead that vastly outpaces their human convenience

@Jonathan_Blow What about crash reporting systems like crashpad paired with aggregation systems like Mozzila's Soccoro and not actively horrible debuggers like msvc? I'd say the state is much better now than back in the day.

@Jonathan_Blow hmm, if anything I could say about current state of programming is we still program in "2D programming" and we should move to "3D".

@Jonathan_Blow I guess the main improvement is that now you can ship with the same codebase to multiple platforms without rewriting it (React, Unity).