After several false starts and a few disastrous disruptions, followed by heroic recoveries, the process of pyramid building took shape and ancient builders were able to complete a few projects. The final shape sometimes did not look exactly as envisioned (the first pyramids have ended up bent), but, nevertheless, the pyramids still decorate the desert today. The experience was passed from generation to generation, and the design and the process were tuned well enough to produce something magnificent and pleasant to look at more than 4,000 years later.
The software practices also change over time, albeit we have had only some 70 years since Mr. Turing wrote the first modern program. In the beginning, when there were only a handful of programmers in the world, a computer program used to be a continuous list of instructions. Functional programming (pushing a function around like a first-class citizen) was introduced very early too but has not become a mainstream. Instead...