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@faassen @dpnash
I think that’s half true, but it ignores the extent to which getting from “very good idea” to “practical” is a massive, difficult, genuinely deep problem. Swift’s optionals are my go-to example (pun intended): the ML-style Option / Maybe was there fully materialized in…what, early 80s? And Swift optionals are fully isomorphic to it in every meaningful way. But they are so, so, so, so much more practical to work with. Why? Better sugar, better docs, better work on bringing library APIs up to speed, better ecosystem, etc etc. Curmudgeons out there who say “ML has done this forever!” but fail to ask •why• if that’s true it took 30+ years to enter the mainstream are experiencing a failure of curiosity.

So yes, hardware. But lots of other things too.