它提供了一种信息丰富的方式来传播信息和辩论。我发现它比标准的采访更具互动性，但没有博客评论那么嘈杂。

我没有资格在一般意义上回答这个问题，但仅限于计算机编程?并不多。

为什么?我思考这个问题已经有一段时间了，我认为我们缺少两样东西:历史感和客观评价我们所创造的一切的方法。并非所有情况都是这样，但大体上是这样。

For history, I think it's just something not emphasized enough in popular writing or computer science programs. Take language features, for example. A canonical source might be HOPL, but it's definitely not common knowledge among programmers to be able to mark the point in time or in which language a feature like GC or closures first appeared. And of course after that there's knowledge of progression over time: how has OOP changed since Simula? Compare and contrast our sense of history with that of other fields like maybe political science or philosophy.

至于判断，这确实是我们寻求成功的客观衡量标准的失败。给定foobar，它以什么可衡量的方式改进了编程行为中的某些方面，其中foobar是任何设计模式，敏捷方法，TDD等等。我们有没有试过测量这个?我们到底想测量什么?正确性，程序员的生产力，代码的易读性等等?如何?软件工程确实应该着手解决这些问题，但我还没有看到。

我认为没有什么重要的东西被发明出来。但自80年代以来，人们对软件的看法发生了很大变化。那时有更多的理论家参与其中，现在你在一个程序员论坛上问这个问题。

当时的大多数想法都没有得到实施，或者即使实施了，它们也没有任何真正的重要性，因为当时的软件行业还不存在，市场营销、人力资源、开发阶段或alpha版本也不存在:)。

Another reason for this lack of inventions is the fact that most people use Windows:) dont get me wrong, i do hate M$, but look at it this way: you have a perfectly working interface, with nothing new to add to it, maybe just some new colored buttons. Its also closed enough so you wont be able to to anything with it without breaking it. Thats why i prefer open apps, this way you get more "open" people, to whom yo can actually talk, ask then questions, propose new ideeas that actually gets implemented, or at least put on an open todo-list, thus you get some kind of "evolution". You dont really see anything new because you are stuck with the same basic interface "invented" lots of years ago... did anyone actually tried ION window-manager in a production environment? It has a new kind of interface, and actually lets you do things faster, event it it looks quirky

M$, Adobe..you name it,holds lots of patents so you wont be able to base your work on them, or derivatives(you also wont know what kind of undeveloped tehnologies they hold). Look at MP3 and GIF as examples( i belive that they are both free formats now, but they are also kinda dead..) MP3 is the 'king' of audio evend if there are few algorithms out there much better that it..but didnt get enough traction because they weren't pushed on the consumer market. The GIF... come on, 256 colors??? From this point of voew i'm curios how many people from this thread are working on something "open" that will get to be reused in some other projects, and how many on "closed", protected by NDA's projects?

即使这听起来有点像“免费的威利”，但在80年代，软件是免费的，所有东西都有文档，所有硬件都更简单，更容易使用……同时也更加有限，所以人们并没有浪费时间去执行3d游戏或网页，而是致力于真正的算法。

也许科幻作家论坛能给你更有趣的答案?: -)

我怀疑这里有一点谬误，你把技术和科学的历史看作是一个稳步前进的过程，是一个线性现象。我怀疑这实际上是一个时断时续、背景、经济、意外发现和普通随机性的过程。

你应该感到幸运，因为你处于历史浪潮的中心，大多数人都不会有这样的经历。

更好的用户界面。

今天的用户界面仍然很糟糕。我指的不是小的方面，而是大的、基本的方面。我不禁注意到，即使是最好的程序也仍然有一些接口，这些接口要么极其复杂，要么需要以其他方式进行大量的抽象思考，而且无法达到传统的非软件工具的易用性。

诚然，这是由于软件可以比传统工具做更多的事情。但这不是接受现状的理由。此外，大多数软件都做得不好。

In general, applications still lack a certain “just works” feeling are too much oriented by what can be done, rather than what should be done. One point that has been raised time and again, and that is still not solved, is the point of saving. Applications crash, destroying hours of work. I have the habit of pressing Ctrl+S every few seconds (of course, this no longer works in web applications). Why do I have to do this? It's mind-numbingly stupid. This is clearly a task for automation. Of course, the application also has to save a diff for every modification I make (basically an infinite undo list) in case I make an error.

解决这个问题其实并不难。在每个应用程序中都很难实现它，因为没有好的API可以做到这一点。编程工具和库必须显著改进，才能在所有平台和程序上轻松实现这些工作，适用于所有具有任意备份存储且不需要用户交互的文件格式。但在我们最终开始编写“好的”应用程序而不仅仅是足够的应用程序之前，这是必要的一步。

I believe that Apple currently approximates the “just works” feeling best in some regards. Take for example their newest version of iPhoto which features a face recognition that automatically groups photos by people appearing in them. That is a classical task that the user does not want to do manually and doesn't understand why the computer doesn't do it automatically. And even iPhoto is still a very long way from a good UI, since said feature still requires ultimate confirmation by the user (for each photo!), since the face recognition engine isn't perfect.

过去30年里处理器速度的大幅提升不容忽视。各种聪明的想法，如流水线和抢占式分支，以及处理器设计电子方面的改进，意味着今天的程序员可以更多地担心程序的设计和可维护性，而不必担心计算时钟周期。