这个问题来自于对过去50年左右计算领域各种进展的评论。
其他一些与会者请我把这个问题作为一个问题向整个论坛提出。
这里的基本思想不是抨击事物的现状，而是试图理解提出基本新思想和原则的过程。
我认为我们在大多数计算领域都需要真正的新想法，我想知道最近已经完成的任何重要而有力的想法。如果我们真的找不到他们，那么我们应该问“为什么?”和“我们应该做什么?”
当前回答
我不知道是否有人已经回答了，“机器学习”作为一个重要的新发展，正在迅速发展。智能垃圾邮件过滤、股市预测、机器人等智能机器……
也许，机器智能会是下一个大事件。
其他回答
这是一个消极的结果，作为一个“基础创新”很奇怪，但我认为适用，因为它开辟了新的研究领域，关闭了无用的领域。
分配共识的不可能性:2001年PODC影响力论文奖
We assumed that the main value of our impossibility result was to close off unproductive lines of research on trying to find fault-tolerant consensus algorithms. But much to our surprise, it opened up entirely new lines of research. There has been analysis of exactly what assumptions about the distributed system model are needed for the impossibility proof. Many related distributed problems to which the proof also applies have been found, together with seemingly similar problems which do have solutions. Eventually a long line of research developed in which primitives were classified based on their ability to implement wait-free fault-tolerant consensus.
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!!!!
至于编程概念，IoC /依赖注入在1988年，根在1983年。福勒在他的Bliki上对这个概念的历史做了一些注释。
我认为在过去的50年里，一个非常重要的计算机发明是谷歌。如果没有一个好的搜索工具，互联网就毫无意义。搜索引擎的出现彻底改变了互联网，使它能够被小人物货币化。
光学计算。似乎它应该存在更长的时间，但我目前找不到任何早于1982年的参考资料(相关技术，光学晶体管，直到1986年才出现)。
