[setr]

>I think there was just a lot of low hanging fruit in the 90s that doesn't exist today, as they are solved problems.

git was 2005, and that was probably similarly impactful in the version control space (in that it was much closer to fundamentally correct, than its predecessors). And there are quite a few standards out there that only survive by virtue of already having been established -- not because they meet any reasonable bar of quality. IPv4 (and all the grand schemes to work around the terror of NAT), email (the worst communication system, except for all the others), SQL (the language specifically -- a mishmash of keywords with almost no ability to properly compose), etc.

The bigger difference I think between the 90's and now is that it was probably much easier to make your new superior standard actually be used -- you could implement a new kernel today which was fantastically superior to linux, and you're much more likely than not to get zero traction (ex: plan9) simply by virtue of how well-entrenched linux already is.

[saghm]

> git was 2005

I'm not sure I'd consider git to be "low-hanging fruit"

[setr]

Given that Torvalds apparently went from design to implementation in 3 days, and 2 months later had it officially managing the kernel, I wouldn’t say it was particularly high-hanging.

[danesparza]

Pretty sure Git was a side project so that Linus could manage Linux source code like he wanted.