Damas-Milner type inference (often called Hindley-Milner type inference) was published in 1983 and has been the basis of every sophisticated static type system since. It was a genuinely new idea in programming languages (admitted based on ideas published in the 1970s, but not made practical until after 1980). In terms of importance I put it up with Self and the techniques used to implement Self; in terms of influence it has no peer. (The rest of the OO world is still doing variations on Smalltalk or Simula.)

类型推断的变化仍在上演;我最喜欢的变体是Wadler和Blott的解决重载的类型类机制，后来发现它为类型级别的编程提供了非常强大的机制。这个故事的结局还在书写中。

软件专利

更好的用户界面。

今天的用户界面仍然很糟糕。我指的不是小的方面，而是大的、基本的方面。我不禁注意到，即使是最好的程序也仍然有一些接口，这些接口要么极其复杂，要么需要以其他方式进行大量的抽象思考，而且无法达到传统的非软件工具的易用性。

诚然，这是由于软件可以比传统工具做更多的事情。但这不是接受现状的理由。此外，大多数软件都做得不好。

In general, applications still lack a certain “just works” feeling are too much oriented by what can be done, rather than what should be done. One point that has been raised time and again, and that is still not solved, is the point of saving. Applications crash, destroying hours of work. I have the habit of pressing Ctrl+S every few seconds (of course, this no longer works in web applications). Why do I have to do this? It's mind-numbingly stupid. This is clearly a task for automation. Of course, the application also has to save a diff for every modification I make (basically an infinite undo list) in case I make an error.

解决这个问题其实并不难。在每个应用程序中都很难实现它，因为没有好的API可以做到这一点。编程工具和库必须显著改进，才能在所有平台和程序上轻松实现这些工作，适用于所有具有任意备份存储且不需要用户交互的文件格式。但在我们最终开始编写“好的”应用程序而不仅仅是足够的应用程序之前，这是必要的一步。

I believe that Apple currently approximates the “just works” feeling best in some regards. Take for example their newest version of iPhoto which features a face recognition that automatically groups photos by people appearing in them. That is a classical task that the user does not want to do manually and doesn't understand why the computer doesn't do it automatically. And even iPhoto is still a very long way from a good UI, since said feature still requires ultimate confirmation by the user (for each photo!), since the face recognition engine isn't perfect.

“奇点”，以及所有类似的项目，即用托管代码开发操作系统。

不确定1980年的情况，但人工智能社区几十年来一直是一个创意生成器，他们仍然在做。

The mouse - There have been posts about human interaction. To me, the mouse was the gateway to human interaction. Without it, we'd still be typing and not clicking in dragging, even with our fingers. GUI - Complimented the mouse perfectly. I work in an environment where an as400 is the backend of one of our major apps. Yeah.. Interesting stuff but it just reminds me of the screens 'Bill Gates' is working in in the movie 'Pirates of Silicon Valley' even though that's not what it was. To me, 1 and 2 are the reason anybody, including grandpas and grandmas can use a computer. Excel / spreadsheets - Someone mentioned this before but it's work mentioning again. It's so user friendly and is a great entry point for non-technical users to try their hand at simple programming concepts when performing calculations on cells. Granted it came out before 1980, but the versions post 1980 are when the technology in spreadsheets evolved. Internet (of course) - Not sure how people wrote code without it! Don't flame me for repeating because this belongs on every list. INTELLISENSE - LOVE IT LOVE IT LOVE IT!!!!