[Yoric]

I didn't want to talk about compilers, because examples are different, and despite the fact that I work on compilers at the moment, I don't have as much in-depth knowledge as on programming languages. In particular, while I'm sure that there are a number of novel things in LLVM, I have no clue which ones. In Swift, though? I see quality of life improvements, but nothing remotely scientifically novel in terms.

Agreed about ideas being recycled over and over in academia.

Regardless, I believe that my point holds: it's very hard to judge "scientific progress" by looking at industry, because most of the time, you're looking at stuff that was discovered decades earlier.