I’m not saying what we have is bad, just that the benefit of hindsight reveals some things.

Computing is tougher than other areas of engineering when it comes to greenfielding due to the extreme interlocking lock-in effects that emerge from things like instruction set and API compatibility. It’s easier to greenfield, say, an engine or an aircraft design, since doing so does not break compatibility with everything. If aviation were like computing, coffee mugs from propeller aircraft would fail to hold coffee (or even be mugs) on a jet aircraft.