October 18, 2002

Historyless

The computer/technology industry to me has moved so fast it has lost touch with its history and culture. Everywhere I look I see programmers who have no real sense of the rich history of programming, who have no knowledge of the basic theory of what they are working on, who have no knowledge of what other people are doing in their field. There a millions of webpages marked up by people who do not know the lessons of SGML and do not understand the basic idea of the web.

The technology sector is like a fast growing company unable to spread its culture to the new employees. Computer programming has a rich culture, but it is constantly being redefined by new waves of hackers who add to the rich history without even realizing it. Go read this if you are a programmer or administrator.

Over and over past problems are resolved with great pride. Perhaps this ignorance of history is a needed ingredient in a field filled with innocent young people looking to make their mark. Each new wave thinks that technology history begins with them; that {Java, C#, Python, Ruby} is the language that will change everything about programming.

All this is sort of suprising given the number of people that I know who are so immersed in technology that they are living completely in a world with no knowledge of its past. Go read slashdot and you will hear from a million young people who are so involved with tech that they say things like "Kids should be taught open source in elementary school" and "Satellite radio and weblogs are going to change the way everyone on the entire planet views their world forever". Fine, if you are going to waste your life only caring about technology at least know about it fully.

October 18, 2002 06:14 PM