[avian]

I often wonder why this is the fact in software development and not nearly much so in other fields. Isn't the point of education that each generation doesn't have to learn past mistakes by repeating them? Do computer science curricula not include enough historical perspective?

I feel like other fields of engineering don't have such a dismissive approach to their own pasts. Show an electrical engineering class an old analog instrument and there's generally wonder and curiosity. Show a computer science class a slide with a 1 MB hard drive compared to an 1TB SD card and there's generally ridicule and laughter. "Look how stupid they've been", not "we've learned many valuable lessons since".

[quantummkv]

> Do computer science curricula not include enough historical perspective?

Anecdotally speaking, the average web developer does not have any formal computer science education. Most are self taught or attend a bootcamp or two at most. They have excellent vocational skills, but little knowledge of anything in computing outside of their narrow path of learning.

[khc]

People who develop webassembly are not your average web developers

[vraivroo]

Oh man, this is so true. An acquaintance of mine who had recently graduated a bootcamp was crowing about how much he knows. I asked him for the big-O performance of adding an item to a linked list. He looked at me like I was speaking Martian.

[newen]

And a lot of times, these are the people writing confidently on the internet about web development. Problem with programming is most of the people in the community are amateurs and they communicate via the internet. And on the internet, no one knows you are dumb.

[LameRubberDucky]

I feel like the world of computer programming is caught in a very fast iteration of the old adage, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Which oddly, I was curious about that quote's origins, so I just went and looked it up. The full quote in context is:

"Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." - George Santayana (1863 - 1952) [The Life of Reason (1905-1906) Vol. I, Reason in Common Sense]

This neatly dovetails with the thoughts that were floating in my head. This part, is the explanation I believe, for the current state of programming, "when experience is not retained, infancy is perpetual."

[pcwalton]

You realize that the people behind Web Assembly, for example Dan Gohman, are some of the foremost world experts in compilers who have worked for literally decades in the field?

[usrusr]

I don't think that GP was talking about the people who actually made web assembly, but about those who hype it. I'd be surprised if the former were not full of awareness of and respect towards the technologies that came before.

[LameRubberDucky]

Your appeal to authority notwithstanding, yes I do realize that. I was not referring to, nor condemning the authors of WebAssembly for their work. I was proposing an answer to the question above, about why it seems like a lot of software development is re-inventing the wheel.

[wongarsu]

I wonder the same thing. I suspect the age of the field plays a role. While theoretical computer science is about 200 years old practical computers only exist for 70 years and are widespread for about 40 years. Many professors teaching computer science today couldn't study computer science back in their days because it simply wasn't offered.

This has wide reaching effects, one of the more obvious ones being that 20 year old knowledge seems ancient to most.

[pjmlp]

In other fields of engineering no one would ever think of calling themselves engineer after a 6 months bootcamp training.

Sadly on several countries this is a thing, which also contributes to a low level of expectation, regarding the quality of delivered work.

My Informatics Engineering degree certainly did include historical perspective of previous languages, operating systems and hardware architectures.