I remember that awkward thrill to see a student thesis from the 60s being more thoughtful than the latest vector drawing program from A. And I&#x27;ve toyed with a long list of advanced packages, none of them has that tiny geometry solver in them.<p>Time is surely not an arrow in progress. Lot&#x27;s of colateral and inherited sub cultures are sucking energy. As you mentioned, a new &#x27;market&#x27; is also a potentially huge drawback, but that&#x27;s such a common thing. People will see the world their way, not as a PhD knowing the history and state of the art (even researchers don&#x27;t know all).<p>It happens in programming languages too. All the web started a freeform joyful environments, unlike c++ or java with their heavyweight specs and standards. But then complexity hits and they&#x27;re suddenly bringing a lot of structure, types, conventions, etc etc. It&#x27;s like a child, who cannot enjoy his parents universe, he needs something compatible with his new mind.<p>ps: my latest &#x27;the newest is less than the old&#x27; moment was realizing Haskell was specified in 1990. At that time mainstream users were given Windows 3.0 and DOS :)