
How is computer programming different today than 20 years ago? - wslh
https://medium.com/swlh/how-is-computer-programming-different-today-than-20-years-ago-9d0154d1b6ce
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zzo38computer
"Some programming concepts that were mostly theoretical 20 years ago have
since made it to mainstream including many functional programming paradigms
like immutability, tail recursion, lazily evaluated collections, pattern
matching, first class functions and looking down upon anyone who don’t use
them." This is true, although some programmers might have used tail recursion
before it was common, as you can do this in assembly language in instruction
sets older than twenty years.

"A pixel is no longer a relevant unit of measurement." I don't believe that; I
use it a lot.

"A desktop software now means a web page bundled with a browser." While this
is very common, it is not true of all software (and I don't use any "web page
bundled with a browser" except the browser itself, and I would like to have
more stuff you can just use a command-line (e.g. curl or nc) or telnet and
don't need the web browser).

"Running your code locally is something you rarely do." Are you sure?

"Storing passwords in plaintext is now frowned upon, but we do it anyway." I
think some people do use hashed passwords; I have not seen much of storing
passwords in plain text.

"Documentation is always online and it’s called Google. No such thing as
offline documentation anymore. Even if there is, nobody knows about it." There
are man pages, plain text files (what I generally use to write documentation),
ZIP files of HTML, and PDF. But unfortunately some programs don't have a
documentation you can store on your own computer.

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32gbsd
So many things wrong with this list of memes but my current annoyance is this;

"A package management ecosystem is essential for programming languages now. "

Package managers are an anti-pattern brought on by the abuse of OOP systems as
tool for api dependence;
[https://owensoft.net/v4/item/2577/](https://owensoft.net/v4/item/2577/)

~~~
eesmith
Your link says more specifically "Composer is an anti-pattern". I don't see
where it applies to all package managers.

Bear in mind that TeX, a non-OO language, has had CTAN for almost 30 years,
which lead to CPAN (since before perl had OO support), CRAN (R), and CEAN
(Erlang, also a non-OO language).

~~~
32gbsd
Definately not all package managers or package management on a whole but how
they are used in modern programming to create "churn as default" situation.

~~~
eesmith
That appears to be rather different than your original comment.

~~~
32gbsd
Noted. The contrast between old and new plus the reference to composer should
have pointed in the right direction. But alas.

