[xkcd1963]

Software itself hasn't "evolved" over the last 40 or 50 years. It only ever gets better because the hardware becomes better. There is no true innovation in software development. Folks that "innovate" either reinvent the wheel or capitalise on hardware improvement.

[belmont_sup]

Look at all the fascinating runtimes that have evolved. Erlang, Haskell, Go, Rust, and include any other. You don’t consider any of these evolution? Back then, programmers were still using threads for everything. Now we have “green threads”. One example of a pretty great evolution. Albeit it does feel like software evolves slower than hardware.

[xkcd1963]

I talked about my statement with a friend the other day and was able to consolidate my stance.

On an intuitive level software seems like a tool to me. Latin had much more gramatical rules than todays English but that doesn't mean it "devolved" or that English isn't as powerful as Latin.

Blockchain is a mathematical idea and software the tool to use it. And LLMs are much more about statistical problem solving enabled through more computing power than about inventing something new.

And correct me if I'm wrong but aren't virtual threads fast enough also because of more computational power? A virtual machine is usually 1/3 times slower than the native machine it runs on.