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by lordlarm 3903 days ago
Maybe it's just a sign of todays technology reaching some sort of early maturity?

You don't see many new revolutionary cars around either - or at least they all conform to the same idea having four equally sized wheels, 5 seats and a round steering wheel. I'm guessing 100 years ago you saw many alternative "paradigms" in the car making domain too, before our society settled on something that worked for the majority of us.
4 comments
azernik 3903 days ago
You also see the same thing in bicycles (some very major features of a bike like which wheel was driven, whether the wheels were the same size, etc. varied wildly in the late 19th century), infantry weapons (assault rifles haven't fundamentally changed since the 60s), and commercial airliners (these days they're all engine-under-the-wing, cruciform tailplane, tricycle landing gear, and the like, but in the early days there was a lot more variety of shape).
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stkni 3903 days ago
Yes, this seems right. In the 1970s I imagine all these different languages were essentially good for a specific purpose and for some time it's been cross-breeding and evolving into a general purpose language.

This touches pretty close on PG's idea of the 100 year language [1], which is worth re-reading so thought I'd mention.

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/hundred.html

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seanmcdirmid 3903 days ago
We are seeing revolutionary cars now, though...who would ever thought that they would begin driving themselves?

Likewise, some more self driving in PL would be nice, it is way too hard and tedious today then it probably needs to be, suggesting there is still a lot of room for improvement.

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venomsnake 3903 days ago
> who would ever thought that they would begin driving themselves?

Any sci fi author since the 50-s?

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seanmcdirmid 3903 days ago
Surely it was conceived of, but did we think it would happen in our lifetime? There are still people out there who won't think it will happen.
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kedean 3903 days ago
I mean, it's been in the works publicly for quite some time. I remember watching documentaries about efforts on self-driving cars in an 'exploring tech' class back in 2002.
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atlantic 3903 days ago
Exactly. Arthur C. Clarke's Imperial Earth (1976) comes to mind.
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kitwalker12 3903 days ago
funny you mentioned cars as I had just come across and article talking about the same thing.

https://medium.com/@ade3/the-zombie-mobile-b03932ac971d

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