Computer science is still a relatively young body of knowledge, strongly linked to technology and therefore to the market. This explains why its historical development has followed complex and hardly predictable paths, including strongly emphasized topics soon forgotten (the network computer, just to mention one); promises never realized (fully automatic generation of software); and brilliant concepts that remained almost unknown for many years (object orientation). As it is commonly said, in computer science it is not easy to distinguish the hyper from the hype.