I saved up to buy a VIC-20 (a 4K computer) and later a C64, writing games for both. Those were magical days I will look back to fondly. That sparkle has not left, though I sometimes miss the purity of near-bare-metal systems of yesteryear.

Like some in my generation, I lived through and contributed to some of the early phases of computing, pre-internet, and am altogether grateful for it.

Like some other responders, I also lived in Tokyo pre-google maps (in the 90s). The system of location one would use in central Tokyo was:

(city 市 or 都 = such as central Tokyo)-> ward (ku 区 = such as Shibuya-ku, if in a city) -> area within ward (such as Aoyama) -> the block / area (chome 丁目 = such as 7 chome, or 7th area) the house number

For those unfamiliar with an area would first observe the map at the nearest train station to locate the area / chome. As one was walking and potentially got lost, could check street posts for the current chome and an occasional neighborhood map / sign to locate more precisely.

Personally I found navigating this way a lot of fun and an alternative hierarchical way of thinking about location.

By the time I was ready to start college was well versed in a number of (imperative) programming languages, data structures, algorithms, etc. However was exposed to SICP in college and fell in love with both the book and emerging functional languages (this was the late 80s).

SICP remains my favorite CS / programming book of all time.

AT&T phone rates were outrageously high in the 80s and early 90s. In todays money, calling a non-local BBS would cost ~20$ / hr. Personally I could not afford and my parents would have been aghast.

I think some got involved in the phreaking and hacking scene because of the usurious rates.

That said, activist investors, the root cause, are a plague. Generally they want to boost short term profit at the expense of the longer-term. They are generally not interested in investing in the future rather cost cutting. Certainly most large companies could do with more efficient allocation of spending, but the US / western drive for short-term shareholder value is anathema to the good of the company longer term.

The problem with this work is with the messenger. His massive ego does not allow for doubt nor does he allocate credit to the science that has preceded him. His off-putting manner and unwillingness to collaborate in the usual way science is done means that even if there is significant merit, few will develop it out further.

Agree that Kotlin is a bright spot in terms JVM languages. For my taste has adopted some of the best concept of Scala, but without the burgeoning complexity.

I suspect a certain laziness in not tackling some of the harder problems in the compiler, for example: type inference, improving the grammar to disambiguate new keywords from variables (for example co_yield). Many features could have been improved with more effort and willingness to tackle hard problems.

Perhaps if Sean Baxter's Circle (C++ language extensions) gains traction, there will be hope to modernize C++ syntax and features.

I took one of his classes as an undergraduate at NYU, but used SNOBOL, SETL, and some other early languages as part of a young scholars high school program at NYU in the early 80s.

An alternative solution would be to allow only autonomous vehicles and have these vehicles in a mesh network so can coordinate to drive efficiently and avoid mishaps. This would work reasonably on highways, but on local roads with pedestrians, bicyclists, and unexpected obstructions, theory of mind and ability to handle outliers will be important.

My conclusion is that something close to AGI would be required to implement succesfully.

There are scenarios where this could work. I could see a LLM generating text comparing products in a category and/or providing helpful descriptive information, meanwhile providing links to said products. A problem would be that they would have to bias the text to promote for a paid advertiser over the alternatives. This skew is unappealing and undermines the degree to which the response from the LLM can be trusted.

We are happy to have "free" services in exchange for advertising. Perhaps a new model needs to be determined, however ...