wiiki - DreamsDisplacedByTrash

If you've read HorselessCarriageThinking then you understand the point here. But this isn't just about unfulfilled promises, it's about perfectly realistic promises which were bludgeoned and shoved aside by pedestrian interests until they suffocated and died. Also include technologies, paradigms, ideas, whatever.

In the style of ZombieTechnologies, except of course reversed,

WorldNet
- displaced by: ElectronicMail
XanaduProject (or even Wiki in 1980)
- displaced by: the WorldWideWeb
AugmentationOfTheIntellect
- displaced by: SpreadSheets, WordProcessors, ComputerGames
CapabilitySecurityModel
- displaced by: AccessControlLists, anti-ComputerViruses, endless security patches (Them thar sound like fightin' words.)
SmalltalkLanguage
- displaced by: CeePlusPlus, JavaLanguage, PythonLanguage
Java (or other system) as universal internet-client application platform
- displaced by: WebApplications (HtmlDomJsCss), and to a lessor extent Flash-based technologies.
Data-Centric PC Languages (Languages with built-in table-handling features, such as ExBase.)
- Replaced (poorly) by OOP API's, and recently Microsoft's LINQ.
Math/Functional-Like Relational Languages (Examples include: ISBL, TutorialDee, BusinessSystemTwelve, TopsQueryLanguage)
- Replaced-by: SQL, the COBOL of query languages (SqlFlaws)
  - This one seems incorrect. SQL started at IBM nearly a decade earlier than BS12, and TutorialDee and TopsQueryLanguage started long after that.
  - If we are going to be selective about the invention timing, then many of the above should also be re-evaluated. As far as SQL, it did not become "mainstream" until about 1980. BS12 started roughly around 1978 (IINM). Thus, it was a relatively early horse in the race, and before SQL became ubiquitous (around roughly 1986).
  - If you aren't attempting to belie the opening for this page, you need to be selective about the invention timing. Feel free to re-evaluate the others. And SQL had an implementation in 1974, whereas BS12 didn't even start programming until 1978, and if that isn't enough then TutorialDee and TopsQueryLanguage are even further from the mark. These clearly are not cases of 'DreamsDisplacedByTrash', rather merely a case of dreams being incapable of displacing the incumbent trash - a fairly common situation in software.
  - If it had a reasonable shot at displacing SQL early in the game, then I consider it relevant. The BS12 road-testing installation *was* "displaced" by SQL. Thus, it fits the description. There's also the ISBL query language, which predated BS12 and influenced it.
  - I changed it to be "examples [of such languages] include..." rather than say they were all actually replaced.

Note that this page is somewhat distinct in purpose from other pages (such as TheBestIsTheEnemyOfTheGood and GoodEnough) in that this page is a list, whereas those pages are descriptions.

(EditHint: but perhaps they can still be put together usefully somehow?)

Not likely. If TheBestIsTheEnemyOfTheGood, GoodEnough and HorselessCarriageThinking haven't been consolidated (and it's really questionable whether they should be) then why should this page be folded into any of those others?

FebruaryZeroSix