We're accustomed to thinking of our world as really fast moving with constant technology turnover, but computer programming languages turn over at maybe twice the speed of human generations. A lot of the features that HN posters, including me, simply can't imagine a language without have yet to penetrate the top ten list of current programming languages at all.

My point isn't that this is wrong, but just to suggest that people's mental models incorporate the idea that programming languages actually move pretty slowly. There's a constant froth of undergrowth in the forest, but it takes a long time to establish a tree, and a long time for it to be supplanted by another.