It's hard to pick out a appropriate quote from your first six paragraphs, it would require quoting the whole lot I think. I completely agree with you.

Programming is still yet a very young discipline when compared to most others. It has yet to established itself in the same way or to the same level of scientific reproducibility as the older disciplines. it is still searching for it's equivalent of the universally standard nomenclatures enjoyed by those other disciplines, and that's reflected in the constant strains between existing and new languages; existing and new methodologies; existing and new tool-sets; working practices; et al. Everything within the industry is still in flux.

In part, this is because unlike the historic, slow boil evolution of the scientific methods involved in mathematics, and the other sciences, which evolved over centuries, through the hands, minds and publishings of a few greats, working primarily alone, but in communication with their (few) peers; programming is evolving in a world of mass communication, widespread, low-level participation, and commercial pressure. It is not so much evolving as constantly revolving. (As in revolution, but also going around in circles. :)

With each new generation, comes a least one 'new' methodology, language, set of working practices. And usually many of each. Each will be held up by it's proponents as the magic bullet that will revolutionise the industry. The Holy Grail for productivity, or reliability, or re-usability, or efficiency. And usually all of those. Invariably, each of these revolutions has some merits. Equally invariably, they have their flaws also.

In this ever changing, and multi-frontiered world, it has become nigh impossible to be aware of all the developments as they happen, never mind keep pace with them sufficiently to be able to pick out those parts that will persist and make it into the future. The historical debates between expert practitioners, often conducted over years by letter, or even the publishing of books, has no true equivalent in the modern world. Single ideas that would have formerly been debated over years, (sometimes decades), come and go in fleeting electronic moments. Lost in the noise of internecine wrangling; interpersonal debates; ad hominem attacks; general and specific flame-fests of all kinds. Everyone has an angle; an axe to grind; an ego to defend; a buck to make.

The software industry spends far too little time exploring and debating the outcome of ideas, methods and practices. Instead of looking back at what was done, and trying to determine what was effective and what was not; how small changes might have made big differences to outcomes; how small parts from several methodologies could be extracted and combined to produce something bigger than the sum of the parts. As an industry, we are always looking for the next magic bullet. The next revolution that will save our collective souls. We discard not just the bad parts of what we did before, but everything, and leap upon the next bandwagon like it was a number 32 bus headed for nirvana.

The art of debate has been lost. The merit of seeing the other guys point of view; the benefit of constantly re-evaluating ones opinions in the light of the other guys thoughts and experience; is effectively dead within the programming community. If you use Perl, you must also be convinced that CamelCase is bad; must subscribe to the OSS ethic; must be one of the LAMs in LAMP.

I'm a relatively new study on the history of mathematics, and I am aware that some of the historical greats were far from ego less. I know that there were, at various points in time where two or more of the greats coexisted on this earth, considerable and heated (if you can get heated when communications is by a letter back forth every month or two :), disputes over big ideas. But, from what I read, on those occasions when the owners of those egos and conflicting ideas got together in the same place, they would happily sit down and share a meal and a few bottles of wine before or after a face-to-face debate where they each held opposing views. Technology means that we are able to communicate ever more quickly and with ever wider groups, but the human part of the equation hasn't kept pace. We humans still fall into our historic roles of tribes and combatants.

To try and bring this back on track. The software industry became an industry before it became a discipline. There are many, too many, languages, methodologies, sets of working practices, existing and coming on stream everyday, for any one person or group of people to be able to say what is best and what is not. Where pure research (into software and development) exists, it tends to be very far removed from the every day realities of commercial practice.

To badly paraphrase a line from a sci-fi program: the software industry is still young; it has much to learn. Sometimes, the best way to move forward is to look backward.