Technology changes that you'd never want to reverse

Question

Have there been any (programming!) technology changes that you've made (platform, language, version) that you never, ever want to have to reverse?

What is the main reason why you would not want to go back?

Ones that come to my mind include

• C -> C++ (OO)
• .NET 1.1 -> .NET 2.0 (Generics)
• .NET 2.0 -> .NET 3.5 (LINQ)

Addition

It would be great if you could include a primary reason for why you would not want to go back

Answer 1

Terminal -> Graphic User Interface

old search engines(1995) -> www.google.com

VI -> IDE(managing large projects "not computer science homework", refactoring code, code generation). I do love vi but....

java 1.4.2 -> java 1.5(Generics, the return of the "printf")

SOAP -> REST(SOAP is overkill)

Answer 2

Yep..

1. Delphi -> C# - Saw that borland was dying and needed to change to a solid OO language.

2. Desktop programming -> Web Programming - No more worries with client connection problems with DB or required software (.Net framework or JVM). I wanted to have visual things on my hand, not predefined Objects that I need to know its entire API to add or remove. Javascript is to me a very powerfull language.

3. C# -> Java - JavaEE turned out to be a very neat thing to me. You make your own Mappings (a predefined pattern can easily call a class and etc), no IIS, log4j, built my own web framework, c3p0..

4. Windows -> Linux - Tired of the blue screens, cheaper, finally a real Shell.., open source software that I can change for my needs..

Exactly in this order =D

A bit of a risk for me to say that, since most programmers here prefer C#. But for me java worked better, nothing wrong with C#.

Answer 3

You forgot to include :

Nothingness -> Microsoft.NET

Reminds me of the quote :

In the beginning there was nothing. God said, 'Let there be light!' And there was light.

Answer 4

vb6 -> c# .net - Firstly, I'm just not a fan of vb, but thats a personal preference, but the move to the .net framework has been a huge leap forward, coupled with being able to use c#, and visual studio, makes my life alot easier

tables -> css, I hate tables (unless I actually have tabular data), and being able to finally take control of my layout and do what I want with it has made webdesign so much more fun, along with the bonus of being able to seperate the style from the content and all teh benefits that brings.

Answer 5

A few things for me:

• Procedural --> Functional when possible, Procedural when necessary.
  • Future proof for multi-core
  • Less error prone to copy&paste (cause every variable has a unique value)
  • Trains the brain
• Delphi --> C# --> Scala
  • Delphi: great for GUI apps, but once you want to do more advanced stuff you are limited by the language
  • C#/.Net: is a great overall eco-system, but tied in to Windows
  • Scala: Great Brain Training. Lacks the eco-system C# has, though.
• Deterministic Free'ing --> Garbage Collection
  • Quite obvious: Helps you to write programs differently (e.g. return instances from functions, helps with functional style)
• Windows -> Linux
  • It's free as in Willy
  • Provides opportunities to actively improve it

But none of those are really constant forever. I will probably work with Windows again, and work on some old Delphi projects, too. It's more a thing for new projects when you can actually decide everything for yourself.

Answer 6

A little more generic answer. I have seen this several times:

Poor/Little Abstraction --> Good/More Abstraction

And hope this will happen many times again.

Answer 7

In the web UI domain:

• HTML attributes such as BODY BGCOLOR -> CSS
• alert() -> console.log() when using FireBug
• custom javascript -> jQuery

Answer 8

delegate -> =>

Answer 9

Fluidics to electronics. .net 3.5 isn't a technology, it's a version increment.

Answer 10

Visual Studio -> Eclipse -- Because it is free, it has a very powerful refactoring tool and I can use it when programming in different languages or platforms.

Answer 11

Losing HTML Tables and Spacer.gifs for Divs and CSS

Answer 12

no mandatory line-numbering (explicit f.E. C64Basic or implicit like in editors as EDOR)

Answer 13

1. SMTP (stop people attaching >1mb files and we dont trust each other)
2. TCPIP (factor in the fact that we really dont trust each other)
3. DNS (Make sure the request and response comes from a valid source/destination)

Answer 14

I'm not sure if I'm answering the question properly, but these were pretty earth-shattering:

• No source control -> SVN
• No automated testing -> Test::Harness (and Test::More and friends...)

Answer 15

1. ASP (VBScript) -> ASP.NET C# ASP.NET
2. Webforms -> ASP.NET MVC

please don't make me go back...

Answer 16

K&R 'C' to ANSI 'C' function prototypes.

Good grief, when I think about the amount of time we'd spend debugging someone passing a float to a function which expected an int... shudder

Answer 17

1. PHP -> ASP.NET Webforms
2. Visual DataFlex with Classic ASP -> .NET
3. Procedural -> OO
4. ASP.NET Webforms -> ASP.NET MVC

Answer 18

The next one. :-)

Answer 19

humm a few. But the main one:

COBOL -> dBase -> Foxpro -> VB -> Python -> Transcript.

Went from a english like language (cobol) all the way through to another english like language (transcript). ;) But I do miss FoxPro. A lot.

Transcript is - well see Runtime Revolution. Like a grown-up hypercard on roids. I'm having fun with it. And lucky for me, my company loves it too.

Let me add one more big one: js -> jquery. Thank the gods!