[wronghorse]

This is certainly an interesting thought. Ivan Zhao of Notion had some similar thoughts on design. That the early pioneers of computing were able to develop a large amount of amazing insights not just due to the greenfield nature but also because they were less focused on the business aspects.

[kqr]

I don't think they were any less focused on business aspects -- other than reliability, most papers and articles seem to focus on bringing costs down.

If anything, I think the Greenfield nature may have more to do with it. Today, we take it for granted that software is really expensive to make, to the point where we don't always question the basic patterns that make it so expensive. In those early days, it was far from obvious that software would be expensive.