in reply to Re^8: Automatic downvote
in thread Automatic downvote

it's just frozen in time and ignoring what happened in the meantime

There may be a reason for this:

I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:

  1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
  2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
  3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.

(Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt)

Alexander

--
Today I will gladly share my knowledge and experience, for there are no sweeter words than "I told you so". ;-)

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Re^10: Automatic downvote
by eyepopslikeamosquito (Archbishop) on Apr 03, 2023 at 21:15 UTC

    Ha ha, I like it! Reminded me of when I was writing Organizational Culture (Part VI): Sociology:

    An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out, and that the growing generation is familiarized with the ideas from the beginning: another instance of the fact that the future lies with the youth.

    -- Planck's Principle

    A person who has not made his great contribution to science before the age of thirty will never do so

    -- Albert Einstein

    DesignerLanguageAge
    John BackusFORTRAN30
    Dennis RitchieC30
    Bjarne StroustrupC++30
    Yukihiro MatsumotoRuby30
    John McCarthyLISP32
    Brendan EichJavascript33
    Larry WallPerl33
    Guido van RossumPython34
    James GoslingJava39
    Anders HejlsbergC#39

    It will be interesting to see if more breakthroughs are made by older folks if life expectancy improves further, especially if it dramatically improves via genetic engineering ... though I won't be around to see it. :)

    Update: As pointed out to me in the Chatterbox, note that many of the ten computer language designers in the table above had already made important contributions in their twenties. Anders Hejlsberg, for example, wrote the core of the Turbo Pascal compiler in his early twenties, while still a student. Dennis Ritchie was a pioneer developer of the Multics and Unix operating systems. Please feel free to point out earlier contributions made by others in the table above.

[reply]
Re^10: Automatic downvote
by LanX (Saint) on Apr 02, 2023 at 12:29 UTC
    > Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.

    Feature freeze before end of life cycle ...

    Cheers Rolf
    (addicted to the 𐍀𐌴𐍂𐌻 Programming Language :)
    Wikisyntax for the Monastery

[reply]
      Feature freeze before end of life cycle ...

      More like unexpectedly extended life cycle without the required patches to the hardware. Looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy, a "feature freeze" around 35 would probably be no big deal duing the stone age, given that you could expect to reach an age of 54 if you managed to survive the first 15 years. Perhaps, it would act as an element of stability. In our time, you can expect to reach an age of more than 70 or 80 years quite easily, depending on where you live.

      Alexander

      --
      Today I will gladly share my knowledge and experience, for there are no sweeter words than "I told you so". ;-)
[reply]
        You shouldn't forget that those people were long exhausted before dieing. All capacity left is needed to keep the status quo.

        For instance I read that Immanuel Kant was called a "Greis" ° at his 50s birthday.

        Cheers Rolf
        (addicted to the 𐍀𐌴𐍂𐌻 Programming Language :)
        Wikisyntax for the Monastery

        °) fragile old man, Methusalem in German

[reply]

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