When thinking about if we've improved or not, I like to point out stuff like this, from 1976:
"My name is Marian Goldeen. I'm an eight grade student at Jordan Junior High School in Palo Alto, California, and I would like to tell you about how I got started working with computers at Xerox, and the class I taught.
It all started in Dcember, 1973, when I was in the seventh grade. (...)"
(My emphasis) http://www.atariarchives.org/bcc1/showpage.php?page=61
Now, after reading that, are you proud at how far we've come in 40 years? I think we're doing rather poorly, and I believe the VPRI folks (and now this new project) is part of how we might do better.
I just wish these people would/could be more generous with throwing code out there for people to run and play with. I'm not sure if it's a culture thing, a funding thing, or a bit of both -- I understand that a presenting a coherent whole can be more powerful than small ideas, but whenever I read the VPRI articles, I always feel there's too little code to play with. I want more! :-)
By the way, there's lots of interesting stuff in that archive[a], like:
"Is Breaking Into A Timesharing System A Crime?" http://www.atariarchives.org/bcc1/showpage.php?page=4
And in fairness, we have seen some improvements:
http://www.atarimagazines.com/compute/issue1/3159_1_THREE_WO...
> ... but whenever I read the VPRI articles, I always feel there's too little code to play with.
That's the whole point of the STEPS project: Less code to play with ;)