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The author seems to think the programming community is limited to web development, or cool new techniques and languages. There is a vast amount of slowly or non-evolving programming, from maintaining legacy COBOL banking systems, to writing groundbreaking technology with mature languages like C.

People who write code for SpaceX or use Fortran at CERN to solve the mysteries of the universe probably don't see this "pop culture" and the constant pressure of using the latest idiom. All you can say is that some aspects of the industry act like this, in which case you're not really saying a lot.



The author recalls writing banking code that talked to a "legacy" application written in MUMPS :-)


So? I've got semi-recent code that sucks data out of InterSystems Caché with yet another obselete programming language. The ability to access legacy systems to assist clients is a sign of craft, not necessary pop-culture programming.


It could also be a sign of engineering. All metaphors are leaky, some more so than others, especially mine.


I think that programming is a microcosm of culture as a whole, not just pop culture. On one end you have the pop aspects of it (Node, Ruby, <insert trendy language/framework>, and at the other end you have COBOL and Fortran and other 'un-hip' languages. In-between is everything that makes up the programming culture.




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