[vkou]

> Fundamental CS tech was arguably better in the 1970s and 1980s, because it moved more slowly and you had time to get the details right. That doesn't matter if you're building say a mobile Ethereum wallet in 2018, because you're building for the user expectations of today, they don't care about data integrity or security as long as it doesn't fail during the period where they're deciding which tech to use, and software that solves the problem (poorly) now is better than software that doesn't exist.

I believe you are a victim of survivorship bias.

There was plenty of shitty software in the 70s and 80s. The difference between then and now is that we haven't been able to wait for 4 decades, to see what software of 2018 stood the test of time.

[kerng]

I agree, back then there was not a mindset of move fast and break things. It was foundational research, a lot results and learnings from then are still applicable today.

[sedachv]

> It was foundational research

In the 1980s there was a lot of "foundational research" (poorly re-inventing the wheel) for microcomputer people who did not know about the work done on large computers in the 1960s. Move fast and break things was also very much a thing for microcomputer manufacturers and most microcomputer software vendors. Look at how many releases software packages went through, and at what rate.

[oblio]

I think you're agreeing to disagree. His viewpoint, to me at least, is opposite to yours. Or at least parallel. He never said that today there's no foundational research.