When historians started to name periods of time, they roughly divided human history in three main periods: Ancient History, Middle Ages and Modern History. Although there is not general consensus on the actual subdivision (I remember something about Burdach and Burckhardt), that is the general idea.
Modern history essentially starts with the 15th century (again, this is debated) and goes on. Then there is the idea of contemporary history, which is a moving target and regards the last 80 years. I somewhat believe that perhaps we need a better name to refer to what happened in the 20th century that is going to last after it is not contemporary anymore. Still, it is not my job.
Something similar occurred with Art History, where Modern Art goes from 1860 to 1970. Then we have Contemporary or PostModern. So in a few years, a new name will be needed... like Post^2Modern. Don't care.
And we basically have the same trouble. In 1960 Fortran was a high level language. So every non machine level language is a high level language. And we call some languages very high level.
In a few years will we have "overwhelmingly high level languages"?
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