Here are some inventions in tech I would be very overjoyed to wake up tomorrow and discover were nightmares of mine that never happened:
Core i9
reason: bullshit branding tack-on to devalue Core i7 and bolster profit margins for nothing
Nvidia RTX
reason: same as Core i9
FORTRAN after F77
reason: versions after this not blessed by Backus due to his retirement, and were not fully capitalised as is proper
C after the end of the 1980s
reason: if you know, you know
C++ after 2014
reason: we had exactly the correct amount of metaprogramming at this juncture and every addition since has been an exercise in performative masochism
Windows Vista onward
reason: Ballsmer was not a visionary and Nutella is somehow even worse
OpenAI
reason: figure it out
Twitter changing to X.com
reason: evil man
Facebook changing to Meta
reason: evil man
Chip and tap on credit cards
reason: it all gets stolen anyway, especially online. none of your shit is safe from anything besides the fact that nobody cares about you
12VHPWR connector
reason: TDPs are already insane stop it
Xeon Bronze/Silver/Gold/Platinum
reason: this was so greedy I haven’t the words
Xeon Scalable
reason: same as RTX and Core i9 like guys WHAT was WRONG with the E3/E5/E7 setup my God
If these things, by themselves, disappeared from the Universe as we know it without leaving butterfly type gashes in the fabric of spacetime, I would be a significantly happier informatician and product developer. I have the utmost confidence that their intrinsic value to the world is zero at best and in all likelihood severely negative.
Over time I may add more items to this list, so be sure to check back on it once every blue moon. You may very well be undisappointed.