> UPDATE: I have a feeling that in 25 years we'll be dissing the current fad du jour - functional programming.
In 25 years, we will be laughing at the present for sure. I just disagree on what that fad is (functional programming is hardly popular enough to be called a "fad", but it's been bubbling under for 30+ years). I think it is dynamic programming languages like Ruby and Python, which to some degree are great but fall apart quickly. Another candidate is Node.js -style asynchronous programming, which will be laughed at once a mainstream language ships with a proper async model like the IO manager of Haskell or Erlang.