'Long-time programmer/researcher/former MIT research fellow Jonathan
Edwards writes a blog called "Alarming Development: Dispatches from
the User Liberation Front."
He began the new year by arguing that software "is eating the world.
But progress in software technology itself largely stalled around
1996." Slashdot reader tonique summarizes Edwards' argument:
In 1996 there were "LISP, Algol, Basic, APL, Unix, C, Oracle,
Smalltalk, Windows, C++, LabView, HyperCard, Mathematica, Haskell,
WWW, Python, Mosaic, Java, JavaScript, Ruby, Flash, Postgress [sic]".
After that we're supposed to have achieved "IntelliJ, Eclipse, ASP,
Spring, Rails, Scala, AWS, Clojure, Heroku, V8, Go, React, Docker,
Kubernetes, Wasm".
Edwards's main thesis is that the Internet boom around 1996 caused
this slowdown because programmers could get rich quick. Then smart and
ambitious people moved into Silicon Valley, and founded startups. But
you can't do research at a startup due to time and money constraints.
Today only "megacorps" like Google, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft are
supposedly able to do relevant research because of their vast
resources.
Computer science wouldn't help, either, because "most of our software
technology was built in companies" and because computer science
"strongly disincentivizes risky long-range research". Further,
according to Edwards, the aversion to risk and
"hyper-professionalization of Computer Science" is part of a larger
and worrisome trend throughout the whole field and all of western
civilisation.
Edwards' blog post argues that since 1996 "almost everything has been
cleverly repackaging and re-engineering prior inventions. Or adding
leaky layers to partially paper over problems below. Nothing is
obsoleted, and the teetering stack grows ever higher..."
"[M]aybe I'm imagining things. Maybe the reason progress stopped in
1996 is that we invented everything. Maybe there are no more radical
breakthroughs possible, and all that's left is to tinker around the
edges. This is as good as it gets: a 50 year old OS, 30 year old text
editors, and 25 year old languages.
"Bullshit. No technology has ever been permanent. We've just lost the
will to improve."'
-- source: https://developers.slashdot.org/story/21/01/03/0010225
Cheers, Peter
--
Peter Reutemann
Dept. of Computer Science
University of Waikato, NZ
+64 (7) 577-5304
http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/http://www.data-mining.co.nz/
'Mozilla is "investigating" a design refresh for its Firefox browser.
Ghacks reports that the refresh is referred to internally as "Photon."
Information about the design refresh is limited at this point in time.
Mozilla created a meta bug on Bugzilla as a reference to keep track of
the changes. While there are not any mockups or screenshots posted on
the site, the names of the bugs provide information on the elements
that will get a refresh. These are:
- The Firefox address bar and tabs bar.
- The main Firefox menu.
- Infobars.
- Doorhangers.
- Context Menus.
- Modals.
Most user interface elements are listed in the meta bug. Mozilla plans
to release the new design in Firefox 89; the browser is scheduled for
a mid-2021 release. Its release date is set to May 18, 2021...
[Developer/Firefox extension author] Sören Hentzschel revealed that he
saw some of the Firefox Proton mockups... He notes that Firefox will
look more modern when the designs land and that Mozilla plans to
introduce useful improvements, especially in regards to the user
experience. Hentzschel mentions two examples of potential improvements
to the user experience: a mockup that displays vertical tabs in a
compact mode, and another that shows the grouping of tabs on the tab
bar.'
-- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/21/01/03/0516247
Cheers, Peter
--
Peter Reutemann
Dept. of Computer Science
University of Waikato, NZ
+64 (7) 577-5304
http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/http://www.data-mining.co.nz/
