this post was submitted on 14 Apr 2026
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I think the window for having that debate was some time around 1992.
I started as a CS major in 1997, and the term was not used.
In your specific circles.
The CS department at the University of Washington with all sorts of tech companies starting up? I mean, sure, if you want to believe your timeline, you're free to feel that way, but claiming this was standard by 1992 is ludicrous to me.
People at the University of Washington don't refer to soda pop the same way as people at Berkley, or at MIT, or at Oxford. Why would they all have had the exact same term for writing software?
Edit: I'm being argumentative, I honestly have no idea what term was common then. At that point most people I knew referred to it as "computer stuff"
Since you've admitted to being argumentative, I'll point out that you misspelled Berkeley. I was accepted there into EECS, though neither MIT nor Oxford. As it turns out, if you don't apply, they don't notice you.