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Comment on The 1950s called and wanted their toolbox back

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The spaceship example the author uses is a good example of why I think he is wrong. My toolbox at home is full of tools passed down from my late grandfather's toolbox. I'm pretty sure if I was building a spaceship, a lot of the tools in it would be exactly what I need to use, as well as new takes on those tools like my pneumatic wrenches.

Sure I'd use crazy new tools in addition, but its not like the fundamentals of a field have to be constantly reinvented; they're just honed, refined, expanded and specialized. The space-flight specific bits would have their own new ways of working on them specific to them, but at the end of the day I'd still just be bolting a bunch of shit together. If the new tech introduces some improvements to the fundamentals to support itself, those improvements will slowly get rolled back into the base systems.

Calling for a revolutionary breakthrough is silly, his analogy of cars is a good example. The automobile's history has just been a slow evolution of better ways to perform the same old tricks. Revolutions within software are going to be smaller because the field already exists. At a high level nothing has changed, while on smaller scale the last few years have completely redefined source control.

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