[Tutor] Anti-Patterns in Python Programming

[Alan Gauld]

On 12/07/14 05:50, Deb Wyatt wrote:

> So much has been invented since my dos programming days and it is
> overwhelming,

Actually very little has been *invented* since your DOS days.
Almost everything we do today was already around back then.

eg.
- The mouse is from the 60s
- Touch-screens are from the 60's
- OOP is from the 60's
- Networking is from the 60's(just!)
- The GUI is from the 70s
- Virtual machines are from the 70's (or maybe even 60s?)
- Unix (of which Linux and MacOS are implementations) is from the 70s
- C++ is from the 80s
- SQL is from the 80's
- Even Python is from 1991, around the same time Windows 3 appeared.

The difference is that the computer power needed to run it has
become cheap enough that ordinary people can use it.

It is a sad fact that very little real progress has been made
in computing over the last 40 years or so. The advent of the
web actually slowed down progress by about 10 years, although
it greatly increased accessibility and popularity. But for
many years the web didn't add anything new to computing/networking
it just made it easier to use. Now with HTML5 etc things are
slowly advancing again.

None of which helps Deb of course!
But I need a rant every now and then :-)

-- 
Alan G
Author of the Learn to Program web site
http://www.alan-g.me.uk/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/alangauldphotos