You make a good point here. I was thinking about this last night. It seems like there has been a cultural shift over the last 15 years or so. This is entirely anecdotal but it seems like attitudes have changed.
When I first got into computers/coding everyone I met was so excited to run into another enthusiast and sharing and collaboration where pretty much the rule. Even the writing from the day seemed to emphasized two types of programmer: skilled and green.
These days everything I read emphasises two types of programmers: ubermensch and the tragically useless, a dichotomy that entirely drops the implication that people in general are trainable in favor of implying there are gods among us and those doomed to merely mortal abilities should do the rest of the industry a favor and take up landscaping professionally.
Yes. I wonder if that split is one of the reasons so much energy goes into re-inventing and re-discovering old ideas. My academic background is in historical research, so I'm particularly conscious of that.
It probably doesn't help that the ACM, etc. keep a lot of important primary documents locked behind their paywall, either.
I'd say it's an entirely human failing to eschew "old" knowledge in favor of all that is shiny and new. This is in no way limited to the programming field. For example this kind of behavior frequently leads to comical nonsense in the machine shop at the local hacker garage (we have a local TechShop).
I've lost count of the number of times I've seen folks gravitate to the shiniest, most miserably complex high tech tools in the shop simply because they're 1. shiny, 2. high tech, 3. complex. There was a guy in last week who's working on a project he plans on patenting. I watched as he spent over an hour setting up a complex system of jigs and programming one of the CNC milling machines in the shop. Seconds after he set the thing in motion the bit managed to snag his work piece (a small bolt), snatch it out of the jig which it then promptly used to murder his jigging system. I could offer a laundry list of minor mistakes this dude made, (no cutting fluid, incorrect jig material/setup, CNC programming error) but the one big mistake is the most interesting in my mind: he picked the wrong tool for the job. A dead simple drill press and a machinist's vice would have not only been entirely sufficient to the task at hand, going "low tech" would have had him productively drilling parts in less than five minutes.
When I first got into computers/coding everyone I met was so excited to run into another enthusiast and sharing and collaboration where pretty much the rule. Even the writing from the day seemed to emphasized two types of programmer: skilled and green.
These days everything I read emphasises two types of programmers: ubermensch and the tragically useless, a dichotomy that entirely drops the implication that people in general are trainable in favor of implying there are gods among us and those doomed to merely mortal abilities should do the rest of the industry a favor and take up landscaping professionally.