I think the current system would be supportable with a collapse. You have fewer developers... but also fewer hackers, so I would guess security stays the same, other than if the collapse created extra crime incentive.
We could just freeze all the fundamentals. If it was a real emergency, we could mostly stop working on new niche languages,Stop adding language features, stop deprecating stuff, and just focus on essential applications with only the tech we have.
We'd obviously want some level or new work on the fundamentals and language level stuff, but we'd just focus on things that help you code with less people and poorly trained people(Replacing C with Rust could be the big project of the century).
Tech is pretty great at the moment, seems like we could just get by for centuries, totally long enough to rebuild, if we just had what we have now, and enough hardware infrastructure to keep the fabs running. We don't really need a new kernel or a new graphics card architecture until society is stable again.
> the current system would be supportable with a collapse [...] Tech is pretty great at the moment [...] we could just get by for centuries
Oops, my bad - I was more trying to shape a peculiar apocalypse to highlight seemingly neglected opportunities for progress. Software tech has indeed tremendously improved over these last few decades - we're living years of dreams. But in some respects... it feels like US general aviation - systemic dysfunction leaving society crippled and stuck using decades-obsolete tech. Spewing cognitively-impairing poison (leaded avgas). Take a 1980's person familiar with smalltalk and lisp machines and OT factor and KMS hypertext, and set them down in front of modern hardware, describe it's power, then turn it on, and... one can imagine a reaction with at least some element of "WTF - such awesome power, but why is it so strikingly crippled?". Picture, I think it was, an early Rails demo talk at a conference, with an audience largely of Java-based web devs... and they were just stunned, awed by how much more productive it was. I suggest we've been repeatedly failing to execute on opportunities for such transitions. "Tech is pretty great[...] we could just get by for centuries"... :) Ha, it sometimes feels like we're working towards that. A story of "I crave a stack with these <empowering features> I've seen separately... but fear I will retire first, years from now, never having had it available". Another decade plus will be a half century since the '80s. You only get so many patent expiration and monopoly turnover cycles per century. But maybe a 2020's "Great AR Rewrite" might pressurize progress???
We could just freeze all the fundamentals. If it was a real emergency, we could mostly stop working on new niche languages,Stop adding language features, stop deprecating stuff, and just focus on essential applications with only the tech we have.
We'd obviously want some level or new work on the fundamentals and language level stuff, but we'd just focus on things that help you code with less people and poorly trained people(Replacing C with Rust could be the big project of the century).
Tech is pretty great at the moment, seems like we could just get by for centuries, totally long enough to rebuild, if we just had what we have now, and enough hardware infrastructure to keep the fabs running. We don't really need a new kernel or a new graphics card architecture until society is stable again.