飞行汽车和悬浮滑板。哦，等等，那些还没有被发明出来。但到2015年，我们必须拥有它们。否则《回到未来2》就是个弥天大谎!

包管理和分布式修订控制。

这些软件开发和分发方式的模式是最近才出现的，并且刚刚开始产生影响。

Ian Murdock称包管理是“Linux给业界带来的最大进步”。他会的，但他说得有道理。自1980年以来，安装软件的方式已经发生了重大变化，但大多数计算机用户仍然没有经历过这种变化。

Joel和Jeff在播客#36中与Eric Sink讨论了版本控制(或版本控制，或源代码控制)。似乎大多数开发人员还没有跟上集中式系统的步伐，DVCS被广泛认为是神秘和不必要的。

来自播客36的文字记录:

0:06:37 阿特伍德:…如果你假设——这是一个很大的假设——大多数开发人员都掌握了基本的源代码控制——坦白地说，我发现这是不正确的…… Spolsky:没有。他们中的大多数人，即使他们知道，也只是签入和签出，但分支和合并——这让他们感到困惑。

收缩包装软件

在1980年以前，软件大多是专门编写的。如果你经营一家企业，想要计算机化，你通常会有一台计算机、编译器和数据库，然后自己写东西。业务软件通常是为适应业务实践而编写的。这并不是说没有固定的软件(我在1980年之前使用SPSS)，但这不是常态，我看到的往往是基础设施和研究软件。

现在，你可以去电脑商店，在货架上找到经营小生意所需的一切。它的设计并不是为了无缝地适应您曾经拥有的任何实践，但是一旦您学会或多或少地按照它的工作流程工作，它就会很好地工作。像SAP和仁科(PeopleSoft)这样的大企业比过去更接近于收缩包装。

这并不是一个彻底的突破，但在1980年之后，有一个非常明确的转变，从昂贵的定制软件到低成本的现成软件，灵活性从软件转移到业务流程。

它还影响了软件的经济性。定制软件解决方案可以盈利，但无法规模化。你只能向一个客户收取这么多钱，你不能把同样的东西卖给多个客户。使用收缩包装软件，你可以卖出很多很多相同的东西，在一个非常大的销售基础上摊销开发成本。(你必须提供支持，但这是有限度的。就当这是销售软件的边际成本吧。)

Theoretically, where there are big winners from a change, there are going to be losers. So far, the business of software has kept expanding, so that as areas become commoditized other areas open up. This is likely to come to an end sometime, and moderately talented developers will find themselves in a real crunch, unable to work for the big boys and crowded out of the market. (This presumably happens for other fields; I suspect the demand for accountants is much smaller than it would be without QuickBooks and the like.)

除了硬件创新之外，我倾向于发现太阳底下几乎没有新的东西。大多数真正伟大的想法都可以追溯到冯·诺依曼和艾伦·图灵这样的人。

如今，许多被贴上“技术”标签的东西实际上只是某人编写的程序或库，或者是用新的隐喻、首字母缩写或品牌名称对旧思想进行翻新。

回答“为什么新思想会消亡”和“如何应对”这两个问题?

I suspect a lot of the lack of progress is due to the massive influx of capital and entrenched wealth in the industry. Sounds counterintuitive, but I think it's become conventional wisdom that any new idea gets one shot; if it doesn't make it at the first try, it can't come back. It gets bought by someone with entrenched interests, or just FAILs, and the energy is gone. A couple examples are tablet computers, and integrated office software. The Newton and several others had real potential, but ended up (through competitive attrition and bad judgment) squandering their birthrights, killing whole categories. (I was especially fond of Ashton Tate's Framework; but I'm still stuck with Word and Excel).

怎么办呢?首先想到的是Wm。莎士比亚的建议:“让我们杀了所有的律师。”但恐怕他们现在装备太精良了。实际上，我认为最好的选择是找到某种开源计划。它们似乎比其他选择更好地保持可访问性和增量改进。但是这个行业已经变得足够大了，所以某种有机的合作机制是必要的。

I also think that there's a dynamic that says that the entrenched interests (especially platforms) require a substantial amount of change - churn - to justify continuing revenue streams; and this absorbs a lot of creative energy that could have been spent in better ways. Look how much time we spend treading water with the newest iteration from Microsoft or Sun or Linux or Firefox, making changes to systems that for the most part work fine already. It's not because they are evil, it's just built into the industry. There's no such thing as Stable Equilibrium; all the feedback mechanisms are positive, favoring change over stability. (Did you ever see a feature withdrawn, or a change retracted?)

关于SO的另一个讨论线索是臭鼬工厂综合症(参考:Geoffrey Moore):在大型组织中，真正的创新几乎总是(90%以上)出现在自发出现的未经授权的项目中，这些项目完全由个人或小团队的主动性推动(通常会受到正式的管理等级的反对)。所以:质疑权威，反抗体制。

Damas-Milner type inference (often called Hindley-Milner type inference) was published in 1983 and has been the basis of every sophisticated static type system since. It was a genuinely new idea in programming languages (admitted based on ideas published in the 1970s, but not made practical until after 1980). In terms of importance I put it up with Self and the techniques used to implement Self; in terms of influence it has no peer. (The rest of the OO world is still doing variations on Smalltalk or Simula.)

类型推断的变化仍在上演;我最喜欢的变体是Wadler和Blott的解决重载的类型类机制，后来发现它为类型级别的编程提供了非常强大的机制。这个故事的结局还在书写中。