My 1992 view of the problems of computer programming in 1992

In this 1992 reflection, programmer Mark Dominus argues that compiler technology—once a major bottleneck in programming—had become so advanced that even undergraduate students could write passable compilers in a semester, making further compiler improvements irrelevant. He concludes that the real limiting factors in programming had shifted to language design, methodology, and conceptual understanding, rather than tool quality, emphasizing that programming remained fundamentally an immature discipline despite decades of progress.